From Hanks to Hanks to Davis, it was quite the triple play.

	John A. Davis spent four years writing and directing "The Ant Bully." Click photo for larger image.

Truman Hanks brought a book home from kindergarten, and he and his famous father, Tom Hanks, started to read it. Not even halfway through, the actor mused, "Hey, this might make a good movie."

The Oscar winner's assessment is being put to the test as "The Ant Bully" plays both regular and IMAX 3D theaters, including Cinemark at Pittsburgh Mills mall.

After being captivated by the John Nickle book, Hanks pitched a movie version to an animator he didn't know but whose work he admired: John A. Davis, creator of "Jimmy Neutron." He, too, decided it could be cool. Really cool.

		LISTEN IN: Audio highlights from an interview with John A. Davis, writer-director of "Ant Bully"" On being based in Dallas. How feedback from children helped the movie's ending. Creating the ant world. All ants don't necessarily look alike. How "Ant Bully" differs from "Antz" and "A Bug's Life."

Davis started writing the script in spring 2002 and "finally, here we are." He was on a publicity tour that had brought him to the lobby of Philadelphia's Four Seasons Hotel, where the harp music in the background drifted over his cell phone.

He was nearing the finish line after four-plus years devoted to the animated adventure about a 10-year-old boy who is miniaturized and hauled off to an ant colony.

"There's absolutely nothing that exists. You have to create the entire universe, and everything has to be designed, right down to every pebble and grass blade, and then it has to be built on the computer and brought into that 3D world." That doesn't even take into account recording the voices or storyboarding, which means mapping out the entire movie like a comic strip.

A sequence where the lead character, Lucas Nickle (the last name is a nod to the book's author), lands inside the stomach of a frog took five or six months alone, Davis said.

"It was really difficult because the whole environment was alive and the walls of the stomach were constantly undulating and the slime was oozing down and there's a lot of fluid in the belly. ... All that interaction took so long to hammer out and get looking right. It was pretty complicated."

Not complicated, it turned out, was signing A-list talent to speak for the ants, thanks to producer Hanks.

Julia Roberts was the first big name and even Davis said, "No way. No way. ... Wow." Nicolas Cage followed and by the time Meryl Streep's name was floated, he figured, "Why not?"

At the movie's busiest point, 250 people worked on "Ant Bully" in Dallas, home to DNA Productions Inc., founded by Davis and Keith Alcorn.

"You get a lot for your money [in Texas]. On a professional level, it's nice to be in a little creative cocoon there, far, far from the studio. It's also kind of fun for me because it's exciting to go to L.A. and be on the lot," amid the energy and hubbub. "And then I like to remove myself from that and go home and go out to eat, and people aren't talking about the movie business."

Davis, 44, is married and has dogs but no children, so he often invites crew members to bring their youngsters to a work in progress and offer feedback. "Kids say the darndest things," he says, sounding like Art Linkletter.

In fact, children who previewed an early ending didn't like that Lucas seemed to be turning from being bullied to a bully. Davis wanted to make sure Lucas stood up to the bully but didn't cross the line by threatening or harming him.

Moviegoers shouldn't expect "Ant Bully" to look like a subterranean version of Nickelodeon's "Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius." He wanted it to be highly detailed and for the action scenes to have a visceral impact, which meant changing both tools and rendering technology.

"As far as the look of the ant goes, I really wanted to try to give them a sense of this sort of tribal civilization, this alien culture we know nothing about. And since they have such ties to the Earth, I started studying aboriginal culture."

Davis, who is developing an animated feature about a male sea horse that gives birth to 100 babies and also is adapting the Robert Heinlein novel "The Star Beast," knows moviegoers might think they've already seen ants in "Antz" or "A Bug's Life."

"Well, there are lots of films that have cowboys in them, everything from 'Brokeback Mountain' to 'Blazing Saddles,'" he says, and no one thinks all Westerns are alike. "Hopefully, people won't look at this and have this knee-jerk reaction, 'Oh, it's got an ant in it, I'm not going to go see it.'"

Just ask Truman or Tom Hanks.