Granpa

Granpa
Screen shot of the title card
Directed byDianne Jackson
Written byJohn Burningham (book)
Produced byJohn Coates
StarringPeter Ustinov (as Granpa)
Emily Osborne (as Emily)
Music byHoward Blake
Sarah Brightman
Wroughton Middle School Choir
Distributed byChannel 4 (broadcast)
Universal Studios (VHS)
Release date
  • 31 December 1989 (1989-12-31)
Running time
26 minutes
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish

Granpa is a British family-oriented animated film that adapts a picture book by John Burningham. Produced by TVS for Channel 4 Television in 1989, it was released on VHS by PolyGram Video in 1994.[1]

An expensive film to produce, Granpa is hand-illustrated with coloured pencil, imitating Burningham's style in the book. It was directed by Dianne Jackson, who had previously adapted The Snowman by Raymond Briggs (1978), a wordless picture book, as an exceptionally successful family-oriented animated film (1982). Howard Blake, who wrote the music for The Snowman, wrote the music and the script for Granpa, which is referred to as an "animated children's opera".[2] The voices of Granpa and Emily are by Peter Ustinov and Emily Osborne.

Granpa won the Prix Jeunesse International award for excellence in children's television programming in 1990.[3]

  1. ^ Granpa, VHS, Universal Studios, released 12 September 1994. Retail product display. Amazon.com.
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference blake was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ Cite error: The named reference noblepr was invoked but never defined (see the help page).