Sagwa: The Movie

Sagwa: The Movie is a 2003 Canadian-American educational animated action-adventure comedy-drama film written and directed by Robert Stainton and based on the animated series of the same name, which is turn based off the Amy Tan book of the same name. It stars the voices of Holly Gauthier-Frankel, Oliver Grainger and Jesse Vinet. It also marked the final roles for Peter Adamson, who died the year before it's release, and Fred Rogers, who died while the film was in post-production. The film serves as a series finale for the show, and has a much more darker tone than it.

Set in the 1980's, the story focuses on the cats of a magistrate of a village in China, who are being chased by a bounty hunter along with the magistrate and his family and workers for not complying with the Chinese government's rules. The film is set to a soundtrack of music from a 1980's and a symphonic metal score, with the score being composed by Mark Mothersbaugh and the score being performed by Therion with the New Japan Philharmonic.

Production
Sagwa: The Movie was one of the biggest projects ever done by CinéGroupe. Amid an emergency rush, director Stainton and the animation crew spent ten weeks on the film's 996,000 frames of digital ink-and-paint animation. Wang Film Productions' division Cuckoo's Nest also worked on the production.

Release
Sagwa: The Movie opened on 67,458 screens on May 10, 2003. The film grossed $21 million in ticket sales and was a minor box office success. However, the failure of GreenyWorld, PBS Kids, and Samuel Goldwyn's next film Timothy Goes to School: The Great Nippon Adventure! caused the next planned PBS Kids films, Dragon Tales: The Search for Zak & Wheezy and Caillou's BIG Movie! to be quietly released without promotion and to go direct-to-video respectively, a planned Arthur film, Arthur: The Movie, to go unreleased, and planned Zoboomafoo and Liberty's Kids films to be cancelled.