70 Fun Facts About Up Movie

Who voices Carl Fredricksen, the grumpy widower at the centre of Up?

When shown a model of the character, Asner joked, "I don't look anything like that." The writers tailored Carl's lines to his voice, favouring short sentences with lots of consonants.

What breed of dog is Dug?

Dug's collar translates his thoughts into speech, which is why he keeps announcing squirrels mid-sentence.

Which merit badge is Russell trying to earn when he stows away on Carl's porch?

It is the last badge Russell needs, and Carl finally presents it to him at the ceremony near the end of the film.

Where does Carl want to fly his house to keep a promise to his late wife?

Carl never realises it, but the tepui his house lands on turns out to overlook the very falls he was aiming for.

Where did Carl and Ellie both work as adults?

Carl sold balloons and Ellie was a zookeeper, which is why their savings jar kept getting raided for car repairs and roof leaks.

What is the name of Charles Muntz's airship?

The name may nod to Charles Lindbergh's plane, and Lindbergh himself was one of the real adventurers the filmmakers looked to for Muntz.

Which veteran actor voices the villain Charles Muntz?

The same year, Plummer also voiced the elder leader in the animated film 9 and played the title role in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus.

What does Carl give Russell at the end as the "Ellie Badge"?

It is the same bottle cap Ellie pinned on Carl when they first met as children, so it has been on his lapel for the whole film.

What message has Ellie written on the last page of her scrapbook?

Carl thought the "Stuff I'm Going to Do" pages were blank; Ellie had filled them with photos of their ordinary life together.

What is odd about the voice that comes out of Alpha's collar?

The joke came from imagining a broken record player stuck playing at the wrong speed, and it undercuts the pack leader's menace every time he opens his mouth.

Which actor voices Beta, one of Muntz's pack dogs?

Ranft voices Gamma, Cooley voices Omega and Kaye is the newsreel announcer, so all four are in the film somewhere.

Bob Peterson based Dug's line "I have just met you, and I love you" on something said to him by whom?

Peterson says that as soon as he wrote the line he knew he would be the one voicing Dug.

Dug made an early cameo as a shadow barking on a wall in which earlier Pixar film?

Dug was originally created for a different, unmade project, so he was lying around waiting for a film to belong to.

What was Up's working title when Pete Docter first conceived it in 2004?

The idea grew out of Docter's own fantasy of floating away from irritating social situations.

How many balloons did a technical director calculate it would really take to lift Carl's house?

At that number the balloons would have looked like tiny dots, so the animators cheated and made each balloon about twice Carl's size.

How many balloons were rendered for the lift-off sequence?

Ordinary flying shots used a mere 10,297; simulating realistic cloth on the caricatured humans turned out harder than the balloons.

Which country did Docter and eleven Pixar artists visit for on-location research?

They reached Monte Roraima by plane, jeep and helicopter, then sketched for three nights among ants, scorpions and snakes.

Which real bird did the animators study at the Sacramento Zoo to design Kevin?

New software had to be written just to render Kevin's iridescent feathers.

Russell's look was modelled on a sketch of which Pixar artist?

Pixar staff habitually sketch each other in meetings, and one such drawing of Sohn became the model. Sohn later directed The Good Dinosaur.

How did Jordan Nagai end up being cast as Russell?

About 400 boys tried out; Nagai stood out because he simply would not stop talking, which is exactly Russell.

Roughly how many boys auditioned in the nationwide casting call for Russell?

Nagai was eight when cast, and Docter tickled him and held him upside down to get the right squeals for the scene where Russell meets Kevin.

Carl's appearance was designed to resemble which classic Hollywood actor as he looked in his final film?

That final film was Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. Walter Matthau and the animators' own grandfathers were also in the mix.

Which Asner TV role did writers say helped balance Carl's likable and unlikable sides?

Asner won five of his seven Emmys playing Grant on The Mary Tyler Moore Show and its spin-off.

Who voices young Ellie in the film's opening prologue?

Elie Docter later became the inspiration for Riley in her father's next film, Inside Out.

Who provides the uncredited squawks of Kevin the bird?

Docter also has a credited role as camp master Strauch, the scout leader at the badge ceremony.

Pixar good-luck charm John Ratzenberger voices which character in Up?

Ratzenberger had voiced a part in every Pixar feature up to that point; here he is the man trying to buy Carl's house.

Why is Charles Muntz disgraced in the newsreel that opens the film?

He vows not to return until he brings back a live specimen, and by the time Carl finds him decades later the obsession has consumed him.

What is the name of the retirement home a court orders Carl to move into?

Its two nurses, George and A.J., got their own short film about what happened after they watched the house float away.

What does a construction worker damage that provokes Carl into hitting him with his cane?

The mailbox is the one Carl and Ellie painted together, which is why the small dent sets him off.

Russell chases after the airship using a bunch of balloons and what household tool?

Carl then empties his entire house of furniture so it becomes light enough to fly after him.

How does Muntz meet his end?

A DVD extra called The Many Endings of Muntz shows the team also tried letting him survive or redeem himself before deciding he had to die.

Which short film played in front of Up in theatres?

It stars a lonely grey cloud whose job is making the babies nobody wants to deliver, like crocodiles and porcupines.

Up made history at Cannes in 2009 by doing what?

Its Hollywood premiere followed three days later at the El Capitan Theatre.

Dug won which tongue-in-cheek Cannes prize for the best canine performance?

The award is a leather collar, and Dug is one of only three animated dogs to have won it.

Up was Pixar's first film released in which format?

It briefly held the record for the biggest opening weekend by a 3D film, until James Cameron's blockbuster arrived that December.

Which film broke Up's record for the biggest opening weekend by a 3D release later in 2009?

Up opened to $68.2 million from 3,766 theatres, 1,530 of them showing it in 3D.

Which horror film opened on the same day as Up in the United States?

Sam Raimi's horror comeback and Pixar's balloon house shared the May 29 weekend, and Up won it comfortably.

Roughly how much did Up gross worldwide?

That made it the sixth-highest-grossing film of 2009, on a budget of around $175 million.

Up won two Oscars at the 82nd Academy Awards: Animated Feature and which other?

It was nominated for five in total, including Best Picture, and lost that one to a war drama.

Up was only the second animated film ever nominated for the Best Picture Oscar. Which was the first?

Toy Story 3 became the third the very next year, after which the Academy shrank the field again and no animated film has been nominated since.

Which film beat Up to the Best Picture Oscar?

Kathryn Bigelow's Iraq War drama also beat her ex-husband James Cameron's sci-fi epic, the biggest film of the year.

Who composed Up's Oscar-winning score?

It was the first Pixar score ever to win the Academy Award; Randy Newman's earlier Pixar Oscars were both for Best Original Song.

Up's score Oscar was the first for a Disney-released film since which 1995 movie?

The score went on to become one of the few ever to collect the Oscar, Golden Globe, BAFTA and Grammy for the same film.

Which cue from the score won the Grammy for Best Instrumental Composition?

It is the piece that plays under the wordless montage of Carl and Ellie's marriage, the sequence critics singled out as the film's masterpiece.

Up was Giacchino's first Pixar film with a director other than whom?

Bird had hired him for The Incredibles after hearing his work on the TV series Alias.

Whose musical motif grows from a simple piano melody to full orchestra as the house lifts off?

Giacchino has compared the score to opera, since each character has a theme that transforms at key moments.

Pete Docter, who learned the double bass as a boy, did what on Up's score?

He had done the same on Monsters, Inc.; his sisters are professional musicians and his father was a choral director.

Which film completes Docter's record three Best Animated Feature Oscars, alongside Up and Soul?

Docter has been Pixar's chief creative officer since 2018 and also has writing credits on the first two Toy Story films.

Which actor-writer, filling in for Bob Peterson, created the character of Russell?

McCarthy later won an Oscar for writing Spotlight; Docter and Peterson had decided a kid was the best way to jolt Carl out of his rut.

The earliest version of the story was set where?

Two brothers were fighting over their father's kingdom; the team kept only the isolation of the floating city and shrank it to one house.

Up is dedicated to Frank Thomas, Ollie Johnston and which third late Disney veteran?

Grant approved the script before his death in 2005 and warned Docter the wackiness needed an "emotional bedrock", which became Carl's grief.

A Pixar employee compared Carl hauling his house through the jungle to which Werner Herzog film?

Docter watched it, and The Mission, for further inspiration; Herzog's crew famously dragged a real steamship over a hill.

The animators consulted Dr. Ian Dunbar to get the pack scenes right. What is he an expert in?

Docter wanted to show what a dog actually thinks rather than what people assume it thinks.

Which longtime Pixar toy partner declined to make any Up merchandise?

Target and Walmart also stocked very little, and Disney conceded that not every Pixar film had to be a franchise.

In which country did Up get unexpected publicity because Carl resembled a former president?

The lookalike was Julio César Turbay Ayala, who governed from 1978 to 1982.

The Simpsons parodied Up's opening in an Itchy & Scratchy short with what title?

Scratchy and his wife stand in for Carl and Ellie in the episode "Loan-a Lisa".

Which ABC series recreated Carl and Ellie's story with Rumplestiltskin and Belle, twin chairs included?

The episode is called "Beauty", and it ends with Belle's collapse and death exactly as Ellie's does.

Ed Asner died on August 29, 2021. How soon afterwards did the sequel series Dug Days premiere on Disney+?

It became his first posthumous release, and the series is dedicated to his memory.

In Dug Days, how does Carl afford his new house in the suburbs?

The series is about smaller adventures: Dug versus a squirrel, Dug versus fireworks, Dug versus puppies.

Giacchino declined to score Dug Days because of scheduling. Whom did he recommend instead?

Datzman had been the score coordinator on the original film, and she brought in Curtis Green to co-write.

The short Carl's Date premiered in cinemas in 2023 in front of which Pixar feature?

It had been scheduled for Disney+ in February 2023 but was pulled and put in theatres instead, the first new Pixar short before a Pixar feature since Bao.

In Carl's Date, what does Carl do to his appearance that leaves Dug confused?

He also buys far too many boxes of chocolates and practises dancing with Dug before the date.

The ride Wilderness Explorers Sky Swings was announced for 2027 at which Disney resort?

It was planned for Adventure Way at the Paris park rebranded as Disney Adventure World.

At which Walt Disney World park did Kevin debut as a free-roaming walk-around character?

Kevin wandered loose among guests there, while Russell and Dug did regular meet-and-greets and Carl appeared only on special occasions.

Which Pixar artist gave Pete Docter a video of Venezuela's tepui mountains, fixing the film's setting?

The tepuis of Canaima National Park had already appeared in Disney's Dinosaur; the research team later climbed to Angel Falls.

Which two real-life figures inspired the character of Charles Muntz?

The team considered letting Muntz redeem himself or survive, but decided that as a stand-in for Carl's old self he had to die.

Roughly what was Up's production budget?

It grossed $735 million worldwide, finishing as the sixth-highest-grossing film of 2009.

How much did Up earn in its opening weekend in the US and Canada?

It played in 3,766 theatres, 1,530 of them in 3D, and took $21.4 million on its first day alone.

What rare grade did CinemaScore audiences give Up?

Critics agreed: Rotten Tomatoes lists 98% positive reviews, and Roger Ebert called it 'another masterwork from Pixar'.

Which organisation honoured both Jordan Nagai and the film for the depiction of Russell, Pixar's first Asian lead?

The group praised Pixar for casting an Asian-American character alongside an elderly one as the leads of a feature film.