As Universal readies “The Tale of Despereaux” for release in December, Sylvain Chomet, the acclaimed director of the Oscar-nominated animated feature “The Triplets of Belleville,” is raising a plaint about its handling of the last issue, if not all four.
In both an e-mail message and a telephone interview this week, Mr. Chomet — who was fired as the director of “Despereaux” more than two years ago — accused both the studio and the film’s producers, Gary Ross and his wife, Allison Thomas, of using his designs and concepts in the movie without acknowledging his contribution. It is a claim the filmmakers strenuously dispute.
Mr. Chomet’s unusually open challenge may simply point to a gulf between European practices, which grant artists enduring “moral rights” in their work, and an American approach that says, in effect, a deal is a deal.
That hard-nosed attitude is especially so in Hollywood, where battles over authorship can be particularly ferocious. Still, it is an unwanted embarrassment for Universal, which is ramping up its efforts in animated features, a genre it has recently left to others. And it offers a glimpse at the tensions that sometimes afflict the business of creating family fun.
The French-born Mr. Chomet, who is working at his studio in Scotland, stopped short of contending that anyone had violated his contractual rights; he acknowledges having been fully paid for his work.
But he expressed outrage at seeing promotional materials for the movie, based on a hugely popular children’s book by Kate DiCamillo, that omitted any mention of him. “I feel utterly disgusted that someone else is going to take credit for all my visuals and concepts on this film,” he said in an e-mail message.
“We’re making a film for kids, a film that has a moral,” Mr. Chomet added in a telephone interview on Friday, “and behind it is such aggressive action about lawyers and legal things — there are no human relationships. I felt like a lemon; they got the juice out of me and threw me away.”
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