The Tinderbox (2007)

The Tinderbox is a 2007 American 2D hand drawn animated fantasy musical film produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios and released by Walt Disney Pictures. It is based on the tale by Hans Christian Andersen. The film was directed by Gary Trousdale & Kirk Wise. It's original songs were done by composer Alan Menken and its score was done by James Newton Howard. The film has a voice cast featuring Skandar Keynes, Evanna Lynch, Ewan McGregor, Nicole Kidman, Mads Mikkelsen, Devon Murray, Elle Fanning, Hayley Atwell, etc.

It's about a young man named Anders, who after his trip on the seas...stumbles across an odd & peculiar item called "The Tinderbox", and not just an ordinary one, but a magical tinderbox that could give him great wealth and summon three dogs with large eyes. He uses it to make him rich and other sorts of good stuff. Along his way, he meets the royal family, consisting of a king named Aaron, a queen named Ophelia and their young 11-year old daughter, a princess named Cassandra, who finds a very good interest in Anders and would want to consider him as a friend of theirs in the kingdom. However, one of King Aaron's men, Mordecai suspects that Anders seems to have something that made him beloved and rich, which in the case is the tinderbox.

The film was directed by Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise, which makes it their third Disney-fairy tale-film in a while after Beauty and the Beast in 1991 and The Snow Queen in 1993, and their first fairy tale-film ever since. It also makes it their fifth overall animated Disney-film they directed, after "Beauty and the Beast", "The Snow Queen", "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" & "Atlantis: The Lost Empire".

Critical reception

The Tinderbox was released on September 7, 2007 with tremendous critical acclaim from critics & audiences, who praised the film for its music, story, characters and animation. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 100%

Box office

Box-office wise, it became the highest-grossing release of 2007, beating out the summer-films like Spider-Man 3, Shrek the Third, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, Transformers & Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. It managed to gross $3.565 billion worldwide with $955 million from the United States & $2.610 billion from overseas-territories. It took home some specific box office records, such as the biggest opening weekend of September with $228 million (beating the previous $35 million record held by Sweet Home Alabama, but then was taken by The Six Swans, another 2D animated film that came out 7 years later after The Tinderbox, which that film opened to a higher opening weekend record with $351 million.

It is currently the second highest grossing H.C Andersen-based Disney animated film worldwide, behind Disney’s own “The Nightingale” which came out a year after The Tinderbox.

Accolades

The Tinderbox received several Oscar nominations which included Best Picture, Best Animated Feature, Best Original Song & Best Original Score, Best Sound Editing & Best Sound Mixing. It managed to win Best Picture, making it the second animated film in history to do so.

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