Rango

Rango is a 2011 American animated Western comedy film directed by Gore Verbinski from a screenplay by John Logan. Co-produced by Verbinski with Graham King and John B. Carls, the film stars the voices of Johnny Depp, Isla Fisher, Abigail Breslin, Ned Beatty, Alfred Molina, Bill Nighy, Stephen Root, Harry Dean Stanton, Ray Winstone, and Timothy Olyphant. The film's plot centers on Rango (Depp), a pet chameleon who accidentally ends up in the town of Dirt, an outpost that is in desperate need of a new sheriff. Rango was produced by Nickelodeon Movies, Verbinski's Blind Wink Productions, and King's GK Films, and distributed by Paramount Pictures, with the animation provided by Industrial Light & Magic. Rango premiered at Westwood on February 14, 2011, and was released in the United States on March 4, 2011. The film was both a major critical and commercial success, grossing $245.7 million against a budget of $135 million. At the 84th Academy Awards, the film won Best Animated Feature, making it the first non-Disney or Pixar film to win since 2006's Happy Feet, and the last one to win until 2018's Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. Plot A theatrically-minded pet chameleon becomes stranded in the Mojave Desert of Nevada after his terrarium accidentally falls out of his owners' car. Seeking shelter, he learns from a nine-banded armadillo named Roadkill, who is seeking the mystical "Spirit of the West", and tells the chameleon of an Old West desert town called Dirt, where water comes in through a mysterious rite on Wednesdays. Seeing no other options, the chameleon heads out into the desert. There, he narrowly avoids being eaten by a vicious red-tailed hawk before meeting Beans, a desert iguana rancher, who takes him to Dirt.