Sightlines · reception

How The Little Prince was received

2015 · Mark Osborne · The Little Prince on Sightlines

The arc

A massive hit in France — Cannes premiere, César winner, and for a while the most successful French animated film ever abroad — yet in the US it became famous for the wrong reason: Paramount yanked its theatrical release days before opening and Netflix scooped it up, turning a global blockbuster into an American streaming curio that's since been quietly reclaimed as a hidden gem.

What’s debated

The eternal split: is the CG frame story about the over-scheduled little girl a clever way in, or a betrayal that buries Saint-Exupéry's book — with almost everyone agreeing the paper stop-motion sequences are the real movie?

Its footprint

Those handcrafted stop-motion sequences — the Little Prince rendered in crumpled paper — are the film's endlessly screenshotted signature, and 'watch it for the paper animation' has become its standing recommendation among animation fans.

Where it stands

A Letterboxd soft spot: not canon, but the reliable 'this made me cry and nobody talks about it' Netflix animation pick.

Did you know? Paramount canceled the film's US theatrical release just one week before its March 2016 opening — after posters were up and press was booked — and Netflix rescued it for American audiences, even though it had already grossed close to $100 million internationally.