The big-screen adaptation of the Antoine de Saint-Exupéry classic The Little Prince has been brewing for a while. It premiered at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival and has already been widely released in France, but when it came time for a U.S. release, the film’s distributor, Paramount Pictures, backed out. It was a sad time for fans of the book, but luckily film’s savior, Netflix, stepped in and acquired it. They’ve just released a new trailer in anticipation of the film’s release, which’ll be on August 5.
The trailer showcases the beautiful work done by director Mark Osborne and The Boxtrolls writer Irena Brignull. While the original novella is a story told to the reader by an old pilot, the movie shifts focus to a young girl with an overbearing, over-scheduled mother. The girl meets that old pilot — maybe in a dream — and he begins to educate her on the wisdom of childhood, and the way the adult world sometimes seems to snuff out the liveliest parts of life. But it’s not growing up that’s bad, the pilot insists. It’s forgetting about childhood that’s bad.
Judging by the trailer alone, Osborne seems to be succeeding in his goals for the movie. He told Entertainment Weekly , “I really wanted to find a way to create a cinematic emotional experience that was equivalent to the emotional experience that someone can have reading the book.”
Saint-Exupéry originally wrote the book as an exploration of his own beliefs, so it’s clear here that the film has placed him more directly in the role of the pilot. Jeff Bridges, Rachel McAdams, Paul Rudd, Marion Cotillard, James Franco, Paul Giamatti, and plenty more star.