10 Reasons The New Peanuts Film Will Be A Complete Success

5. The Voice Actors

Although no kids have been named yet, we've at least heard a brief glimpse at who will be voicing Charlie Brown, and as far as the rest of the cast, that will all come in time. But one thing we can be sure of is the film's priority of casting child voice actors in the key roles. As of yet there's no reason to believe famous adult actors will be lending their voices, as has been the industry standard with most animated features. When they were producing the very first special, A Charlie Brown Christmas, they were dealing with an extremely limited budget. Many of the execs at CBS wanted adult voice actors doing child voices in addition to wanting a false laugh track, similar to cartoon styled sitcoms like the Flintstones and The Jetsons. But the film-makers stuck to their guns, cast children in the roles - many of them with no acting background - and did away with the idea of the laugh track. As a result of their shoestring budget and inexperienced actors, the resulting animation and voices came out choppy and strung together. Despite all of its technical faults, audiences loved it, and it has been broadcast literally every year since and won both an Emmy and a Peabody award. We'll never know what that original special would have been like with adults pretending to be kids, but one of the things that makes the specials so endearing is that it's real kids doing the voices. The fact that the new film will be following in that tradition is a comfortable reassurance that part of the success of the Peanuts is dependent upon the very thing that drives its stories; kids.