The Little Prince set to be an Animated Movie

The Little Prince, the classic French novella by Antoine de Saint-Exupery, is set to be made into an animated movie. Mark Osborne, who directed Kung Fu Panda, is helming the project, which is being produced by Onyx Films’ Aton Soumache (who also produced the stylish 2006 animated film Renaissance0 and Dimitri Rassam. James Franco, Rachel McAdams, Jeff Bridges, Marion Cotillard, Benicio Del Toro, and Paul Giamatti have all signed on to lend their voices to the movie. Production and target release dates are yet to be announced. [read more about The Little Prince after the jump]

The story of the Little Prince centers on a pilot who crash-lands in the Sahara desert and comes across a little boy who says he is a prince fallen to Earth from his home on an asteroid. As the pilot repairs his plane, the little prince regales him with stories about his home and the foolish inhabitants of nearby asteroids.

The Little Prince (French: Le Petit Prince), first published in 1943, is a novella and the most famous work of the French aristocrat, writer, poet and pioneering aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900–1944).

The novella is both the most read and most translated book in the French language, and was voted the best book of the 20th century in France. Translated into more than 250 languages and dialects (including braille), selling over a million copies per year with sales totalling more than 140 million copies worldwide, it has become one of the best-selling books ever published.