Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole

Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole is a 2010 animated fantasy action-adventure film directed by Zack Snyder. Based on the Guardians of Ga'Hoole book series by Kathryn Lasky, the film was written by John Orloff and Emil Stern and features the voices of Helen Mirren, Geoffrey Rush, Jim Sturgess, Hugo Weaving, Emily Barclay, Abbie Cornish, Ryan Kwanten, Anthony LaPaglia, Miriam Margolyes, Sam Neill, Richard Roxburgh, and David Wenham. An international co-production between Australia and the United States, the film was produced by Village Roadshow Pictures and Animal Logic, following their success with the 2006 film Happy Feet. In the film, Soren (Sturgess), a barn owl, is kidnapped and taken to St. Aegolius Academy for Orphaned Owls led by Metal Beak (Joel Edgerton) and Nyra (Mirren), where owlets are brainwashed into becoming supremacist soldiers. He befriends a fellow owl named Gylfie (Barclay), and they later escape the facility and sets out to find the Island of Ga'Hoole to rally the Guardians for war. Legend of the Guardians was theatrically released in RealD 3D and IMAX 3D in North America on September 24, 2010, and in Australia on September 30, 2010, by Warner Bros. Pictures; it was accompanied by a new 3D Looney Tunes cartoon entitled Fur of Flying. The film received mixed reviews from critics, who praised its dark tone, animation and voice acting, but criticized the changes made to the source material and grossed $140.1 million worldwide against a budget of $80 million.