64 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 is a Golden Retriever, the friendly outcast of Muntz's pack; the collar Muntz built 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?

Assisting the Elderly is the last badge Russell needs to become a Senior Wilderness Explorer, which is why he knocks on Carl's door offering to help him cross the street.

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

Paradise Falls, the South American waterfall from Charles Muntz's newsreels, was Ellie's childhood dream; the house lands on the far side of the tepui, so Carl and Russell drag it across on foot.

Where did Carl and Ellie both work as adults?

Both worked at the city zoo: Carl sold balloons from a cart and Ellie was a zookeeper in the South America house; their Paradise Falls savings jar kept getting raided for car repairs and roof leaks.

What is the name of Charles Muntz's airship?

Muntz's dirigible is the Spirit of Adventure, seen in the newsreels young Carl and Ellie watch; decades later Carl finds it moored in a cave near Paradise Falls, full of trophies and dogs.

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.

At the end of Up, what does Carl pin on Russell as the 'Ellie Badge'?

A bottle cap Ellie gave 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?

'Thanks for the adventure – now go have a new one!' closes the pages Carl thought 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?

It is squeaky and high-pitched, like a broken record player stuck at the wrong speed, undercutting the pack leader's menace every time he opens his mouth.

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

Delroy Lindo voices Beta, the Rottweiler; Jerome Ranft voices Gamma, Josh Cooley voices Omega and David 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, who wrote and voices Dug, heard 'I've just met you and I love you' from a child at a summer camp where he was a counselor in the 1980s, and kept it for the dog.

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

Dug's shadow appears barking at Remy on a wall in Ratatouille (2007), two years before Up, an early nod to a character Pixar was already developing.

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?

A Pixar technical director worked out that 23 million balloons would be needed to lift an 1,800-square-foot house; at that number they would look like dots, so the film uses far fewer, oversized balloons.

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

Pixar rendered 20,622 balloons for the lift-off sequence and 10,297 for ordinary flying shots, each balloon simulated as its own object tugging on the house.

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

The team went to Venezuela in 2004, reaching the tepui Monte Roraima by plane and helicopter, then sketching for three nights among ants, scorpions and snakes; those tabletop mountains became Paradise Falls.

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

Kevin was based on the Himalayan monal, a pheasant with iridescent plumage the animators studied at the Sacramento Zoo; new software had to be written just to render those 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?

About 400 boys auditioned nationwide; Jordan Nagai won the part, and Docter tickled him and held him upside down to get the right squeals for Russell's first meeting with Kevin.

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

Carl was modelled on Spencer Tracy as he looked in his final film, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967), blended with Walter Matthau and the animators' own grandfathers.

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, who had voiced a part in every Pixar feature up to then, is construction foreman Tom, the hard-hat who keeps asking Carl to sell the house to his boss.

In the newsreel that opens Up, why is the explorer Charles Muntz disgraced?

His giant bird skeleton is declared a fake, so he vows not to return from Paradise Falls until he brings back a live specimen; decades later the obsession has consumed him.

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

Shady Oaks is the home whose nurses George and A.J. arrive to collect Carl; the pair got their own 2009 short, George and A.J., about the fallout after they watched the house float away.

In Up, a construction worker damages what, provoking Carl into hitting him with his cane?

His mailbox, the one Carl and Ellie painted together, which is why a small dent sets him off and lands him in court.

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

Russell ties himself to a bunch of balloons and steers with a leaf blower; Carl then throws all his furniture out of the house so it is 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?

Partly Cloudy, directed by Peter Sohn, played before Up; 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?

Up was the first animated film, and the first in 3D, to open the Cannes Film Festival, on 13 May 2009; 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?

Dug won the Palm Dog, the unofficial Cannes prize for best canine performance, in 2009; the award itself is a leather dog collar.

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

Up was Pixar's first feature released in 3D, shown in Disney Digital 3D in about 1,500 of its opening theatres alongside the standard 2D prints.

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

Avatar's $77 million debut in December 2009 topped the 3D opening record Up had set in May; Up had opened in 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?

Up took about $735 million worldwide, $293 million of it domestic, the sixth-highest total of 2009 behind Avatar, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Ice Age 3, Transformers 2 and 2012.

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

Up won Best Original Score as well as Best Animated Feature; its five nominations also included Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay and Best Sound Editing.

Which was the first animated film nominated for the Best Picture Oscar?

Beauty and the Beast (1991) was the first animated film nominated for Best Picture, in a five-film field; Up (2009) and Toy Story 3 (2010) followed once the field widened to ten.

Which film beat Up to the Best Picture Oscar?

The Hurt Locker, Kathryn Bigelow's Iraq War drama, won Best Picture over Up and the rest of the ten-film field, also beating her ex-husband James Cameron's Avatar, the year's biggest film.

Who composed Up's Oscar-winning score?

Michael Giacchino's score was the first Pixar score to win the Academy Award; the studio's only earlier music Oscar was Randy Newman's Best Original Song for Monsters, Inc.

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

Married Life is the cue under the wordless montage of Carl and Ellie's years together; it won the Grammy for Best Instrumental Composition in 2011, 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?

Ellie's theme, introduced as a simple piano waltz, swells to full orchestra as the house lifts off; Giacchino has compared the score to opera, with each character's theme transforming at key moments.

What do Muntz's dogs pilot when they chase Carl's house?

Muntz's dogs pilot propeller fighter planes launched from the Spirit of Adventure, steering with bones in their mouths and talking through their collars as they chase Russell through the clouds.

Docter won the Best Animated Feature Oscar for Up, Soul and which other film?

Inside Out (2015) brought Docter his second Best Animated Feature Oscar, between Up (2009) and Soul (2020); he became Pixar's chief creative officer in 2018.

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.

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

Fitzcarraldo (1982), in which Herzog's crew dragged a real steamship over a hill, was the comparison; Docter watched it and The Mission for further inspiration.

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?

Thinkway Toys, Pixar's toy partner since Toy Story, passed on Up; 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?

In Colombia the lookalike was Julio César Turbay Ayala, president from 1978 to 1982, and the resemblance earned the film free publicity there.

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

The short, titled P.U., appears in the 2010 episode Loan-a Lisa; Scratchy and his wife stand in for Carl and Ellie until Itchy intervenes.

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

Once Upon a Time's season-seven episode Beauty (2017) mirrors the montage, down to Belle's collapse and death in the chair beside Rumplestiltskin's.

Outside which ice-cream parlour do Carl and Russell count cars at the end?

Carl and Russell end the film on the kerb outside Fentons, the Oakland creamery Russell used to visit with his father, counting red and blue cars over ice cream.

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

Carl's Date played before Elemental in June 2023 after being pulled from a planned Disney+ release, the first new Pixar short attached to a Pixar feature since Bao in 2018.

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

Carl dyes his hair black to look younger and Dug, not recognising the stranger in the mirror, growls at him; he also practises dancing with Dug before the date.

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

Kevin wandered loose among guests at Disney's Animal Kingdom, the park that also staged the Up! A Great Bird Adventure show with Russell and Dug; Carl appeared only on special occasions.

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

Pixar's Ralph Eggleston handed Docter a video of the tepuis; Canaima National Park's table mountains had already appeared in Disney's Dinosaur, and the research team later visited Angel Falls.

Which society revokes Muntz's membership in the opening newsreel?

The Movietown newsreel reports that the National Explorer's Society has revoked Muntz's membership over the disputed bird skeleton, prompting his vow never to return without a live specimen.

Roughly what was Up's production budget?

Approximately $175 million, in line with Pixar's budgets of the period: WALL-E had cost about $180 million and Ratatouille about $150 million.

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?

East West Players, the Los Angeles Asian-American theatre company, honoured Nagai and Pixar for making an Asian-American boy and an elderly man the leads of a feature film.