The Australian
February 11, 2009

THE producers of Oscar-winning animated film Happy Feet have ensured their next big project will also have an Australian flavour.

Guardians of Ga'Hoole, based on the New York Times best-selling children's book series by Kathryn Lasky, will feature characters voiced by Australian actors Geoffrey Rush, Rachael Taylor and David Wenham.

The animated film is being created at Sydney animation studio Animal Logic and will be released in movie theatres next year.

One of Hollywood's hottest properties, Zack Snyder, who directed the 2006 film, 300, and the upcoming big screen adaptation of the graphic novel, Watchmen, is directing the movie.

Guardians of Ga'Hoole is about Soren, a young barn owl, who escapes an orphanage where owlets are brainwashed into becoming soldiers.

Animal Logic has teamed up with Australian film distributor and producer Village Roadshow and Hollywood studio Warner Bros to make the film.

The trio's last major project was 2006's Happy Feet, about singing and dancing penguins and also voiced by an all-star Australian cast headed by Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman and Hugo Weaving.

Happy Feet, directed by George Miller, won the best animated film Oscar and went on to make more than $US380m ($580.73m).

Rush is a three-time Oscar nominee, winning in 1997 for Shine, Taylor is best known for her Australian television series Headland and the 2007 Hollywood blockbuster Transformers, while Wenham starred in 300 and Baz Luhrmann's epic, Australia.