In the latest Screen Rant Pitch Meeting, Ryan George reveals what (probably) happened when DreamWorks Animation first decided to make Bee Movie, an animated movie in which Jerry Seinfeld voices a bee called Barry B. Benson. It may not have exactly been a hit, but at least it inspired its own bizarre subculture of memes.
Back in 1998, both DreamWorks and Pixar released animated movies about the lives of ants - Antz and A Bug’s Life, respectively. Pixar’s movie was the bigger success, but a decade later DreamWorks decided to take another stab at the insect kingdom with Bee Movie, a movie about a bee who falls in love with a human woman and subsequently takes the human race to court for its theft of honey from the bees. Also at one point the bees have to help safely land a plane.
If that simple synopsis has you questioning how Bee Movie ever got made, well, you’re not alone. But not only did it get made, it actually had a production budget of $150 million! DreamWorks clearly had a lot of faith in Bee Movie’s potential, so here’s our guess at how the initial pitch meeting went down.
Like many great artists, Barry B. Benson wasn’t truly appreciated in his own time. However, in recent years Bee Movie has seen a resurgence in popularity thanks to the internet’s deep love of all things weird. From “beestiality” fan fiction (please don’t Google it) to a YouTube video of the entire movie that speeds up every time someone says the word “bee,” Bee Movie certainly has a unique legacy… though it’s probably not the kind of legacy that Seinfeld had imagined.
Naturally there’s been a lot of interest in a sequel to Bee Movie over the years. In a 2016 Reddit AMA, Seinfeld said that he had considered it but was concerned that “it would make Bee Movie 1 less iconic.” However, later that same year he seemed to be mulling over the possibility of Bee Movie 2 again, asking fans on Twitter, “Should I? Any interest?”
Some might say that there’s no way DreamWorks will ever make a Bee Movie sequel, given that the first movie was a box office flop. But if you’re one of those doubters, just remember that according to all known laws of aviation, there is no way a bee should be able to fly.
