50 Fun Facts About Over the Hedge

What kind of animal is RJ, the film's scheming lead character?

He accidentally destroys a bear's food stockpile and has one week to replace it or die.

Who voices RJ?

The original choice dropped out in October 2004, though some of his recorded lines remained.

What is the name of the bear whose food RJ destroys?

Nick Nolte voices him.

How long does the bear give RJ to replace his food?

He threatens to kill RJ if he fails or runs away, which is what drives RJ to con the woodland family.

What kind of animal is Verne, the leader of the woodland foragers?

Garry Shandling voices him. In the comic strip he is a lactose-abhorrent ornate box turtle whose tail tingles when something is wrong.

What do the animals discover when they wake from hibernation on the first day of spring?

RJ shows up and convinces them that human food is easier to steal than forage.

Which actor voices Hammy the squirrel?

Empire compared Hammy to Ice Age's Scrat 'in the pantheon of lunatic movie rodents'.

Who voices Stella the skunk?

Stella steals Tiger the cat's collar to get the animals into Gladys's house, and Tiger falls for her.

William Shatner voices Ozzie the opossum. Who voices his embarrassed teenage daughter Heather?

It was the singer's first major film role. In the Japanese and Korean dubs, BoA voices Heather and sings the theme songs.

Which longtime SCTV comedy partners voice the porcupine parents Lou and Penny?

The pair later reunited as Johnny and Moira Rose on Schitt's Creek. Their triplets here are Spike, Bucky and Quillo.

Who is Gladys Sharp?

Allison Janney voices her. She hires an exterminator and ends up arrested for possessing an illegal trap.

What is the name of the exterminator Gladys hires, known as the Verminator?

Thomas Haden Church voices him. In the video game he controls captured animals as mind-controlled henchmen.

What is the Depelter Turbo?

Dwayne rigs the contraband device in Gladys's yard; Hammy disables it, then reactivates it to catch the bear, Gladys and Dwayne.

What is Nugent?

His chase destroys the animals' first food pile. At the end he foils Dwayne's escape.

What is the name of Gladys's Persian cat, who ends up smitten with Stella?

Omid Djalili voices him. Tiger joins the woodland family at the end.

Which snack does RJ go back for at Gladys's house because the bear specifically wanted it?

That detour lets Dwayne capture Verne and the others while RJ flees with the wagon.

What fuels Hammy's super-speed at the climax, letting him reactivate the trap?

Time appears to slow to a crawl around him. Afterwards he remembers where he stored his nuts from last winter.

Where does animal control send the bear at the end of the film?

Gladys is arrested for possessing the Depelter Turbo and resisting arrest.

In the closing scene, RJ raids a vending machine and then realises what?

It is the same machine from the film's opening, where RJ's night of scheming began.

Which two comedy legends were initially considered to voice RJ and Verne?

Gene Wilder was also offered a part, as an owl named Norbert, but declined and the character was cut.

Which actor was announced as RJ in 2002 before dropping out in 2004?

Some of his lines survived in the finished film.

Which studio produced Over the Hedge?

It was the first DreamWorks Animation film distributed under the studio's new deal with Paramount, after Viacom bought DreamWorks SKG.

Who directed the film?

Kirkpatrick also co-wrote it. Johnson had co-directed Antz.

Which singer-songwriter added three originals and a rewrite of 'Rockin' the Suburbs' to the soundtrack?

He also covered a Clash song. Rupert Gregson-Williams wrote the score and Hans Zimmer was executive music producer.

Which Clash song did Ben Folds cover for the film?

The song's consumerist theme fits a movie that TV Guide called 'a sly satire of American enough-is-never-enough consumerism'.

Which film beat Over the Hedge to first place on its opening weekend in May 2006?

It opened with $38.5 million. Its second weekend, over Memorial Day, dropped only 8 percent across four days.

Roughly how much did Over the Hedge gross worldwide on an $80M budget?

Katzenberg still said it fell just short of earning a sequel: 'It was close. An almost.'

What grade did CinemaScore audiences give the film?

Rotten Tomatoes settled at 75 percent and Roger Ebert gave it three stars out of four.

Per co-creator Michael Fry, why did the actors work for a fraction of their usual fees?

He estimated paying them properly would add $20 million to a sequel budget, making Madagascar 3 the obvious choice instead.

Which atmospheric phenomenon was named after the hedge in the film?

Aurora watchers who spotted the purple ribbon of light gave it the film's joke name before scientists made it a backronym.

Where was the movie screened out of competition on May 21, 2006?

It had premiered in Los Angeles on April 30 after a work-in-progress screening in Indianapolis the day before.

What is the title of the short film on the home releases, set after the events of the movie?

The main voice cast reprised their roles. It later turned up as a bonus on the Madly Madagascar DVD.

Which company published the 2006 Over the Hedge video game?

Only the three child actors who voiced the porcupine triplets reprised their roles; soundalikes handled everyone else.

What is the name of the follow-up game released in three different versions in autumn 2006?

It was a mini-golf game on Game Boy Advance, an action-adventure on DS and a platformer on PSP.

Who created the Over the Hedge comic strip in 1995?

Fry wrote and Lewis drew. Lewis had been a children's book illustrator and Fry a freelance writer.

What was the rejected comic strip Fry and Lewis pitched before Over the Hedge?

Editors thought readers would not relate to a rural setting with pig heroes, so the pair swapped in two more ordinary animals.

The end of which beloved comic strip in December 1995 helped Over the Hedge get picked up by 110 newspapers?

United Feature Syndicate had approved the strip earlier that year; it debuted on June 12, 1995.

In the comic strip, what is RJ's favourite food?

Strip RJ is a con artist who is sometimes drawn without a brain, storing his hanky and breath mints in the cavity instead.

Which human character in the comic strip can talk to and understand the animals?

RJ read The Hunchback of Notre-Dame to her before she was born after Verne told him babies can hear from the womb.

What is Verne's proudest achievement in the comic strip?

He shouted 'Let the global cooling commence!' just as RJ was about to plug them all in. He is also a computer nerd who once 'broke' the internet.

Which two contestants from The Apprentice won small voice roles as Lunch Table Larry and BBQ Barry?

They won the parts on the show's fifth season.

Which company distributed the film in the US under a new seven-year deal with DreamWorks?

Universal acquired the rights after its parent Comcast bought DreamWorks Animation in 2016.

Who voices Vincent the bear?

Nolte attended the April 2006 Los Angeles premiere with Willis, Lavigne and Steve Carell.

Which comedy actor was announced as the voice of Verne alongside Jim Carrey in 2002?

Shandling kept the part; Carrey dropped out in 2004 and Bruce Willis took over RJ.

Gene Wilder turned down the role of which scrapped character?

Bill Murray and Harold Ramis were the first choices for RJ and Verne.

Who composed the film's original score?

Hans Zimmer served as executive music producer, and Epic Records released the soundtrack.

Which K-pop star voices Heather in the Japanese and Korean dubs and sings their theme songs?

Her themes were 'Key of Heart' for Japan and 'People Say' for Korea.

What was the film's original release date before it was pushed to May 2006?

The date was changed in December 2004.

Which short film accompanied Over the Hedge in select US theaters?

The movie was also shown out of competition at Cannes two days after its US release.

What score does the film hold on Metacritic?

Rotten Tomatoes sits at 75 percent; Roger Ebert gave it three stars out of four.