Cars is a 2006 American animated family film produced by Pixar and directed by both John Lasseter and Joe Ranft.
It is the seventh Disney·Pixar feature film, and the final film by
Pixar before it was bought by Disney. Set in a world populated entirely
by anthropomorphic cars and other vehicles, it features voices by Owen Wilson, Paul Newman (in his final non-documentary feature), Bonnie Hunt, Cheech Marin, Jenifer Lewis, Tony Shalhoub, John Ratzenberger, George Carlin, Larry the Cable Guy and Michael Keaton as well as voice cameos by several celebrities including Jeremy Piven, Jeremy Clarkson of Top Gear, Richard Petty, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Bob Costas, Darrell Waltrip, Jay Leno, Michael Schumacher, Tom and Ray Magliozzi from NPR's Car Talk, and Mario Andretti. The film is also the second Pixar film to have an entirely non-human cast after A Bug's Life.
Cars premiered on May 26, 2006 at Lowe's Motor Speedway in Concord, North Carolina, and was released on June 9, 2006, to generally favorable reviews. It was nominated for two Academy Awards, including Best Animated Feature, and won the Golden Globe Award for Best Animated Feature Film. It was released on DVD November 7, 2006 and on Blu-ray Disc
in late 2007. Related merchandise, including scale models of several of
the cars, broke records for retail sales of merchandise based on a
Disney·Pixar film, with an estimated $5 billion in sales.
A sequel, Cars 2, is currently in production and set for release on June 24, 2011.
|