Movie: Because of Winn-Dixie

Kate DiCamillo has only written 3 books and all of them have won awards. Her first book, Because of Winn-Dixie will be a movie in February, 2005. The trailer is here.

There is an interesting article in Urban Dog Magazine: get in touch with your inner dog about the dog(s) and their trainer for the movie.

To find the perfect canine to play the title character in Because of Winn-Dixie, director Wayne Wang (The Joy Luck Club, Maid in Manhattan) turned to the folks at Birds and Animals. “He wanted a unique look in the dog,” Forbes says. “Something people hadn’t seen before but something that resembled the dog on the front of Kate DiCamillo’s book.” ...

Forbes and Wang sat down with a dog book and Wang picked out several different breeds he wanted to see. Forbes got to work finding breeders for all the different types of dogs, including the very rare Picardy Shepherd. The Picardy, a large breed named after the region in northern France where it first developed, had been almost wiped out during World War I. Forbes found a handful of breeders in Europe and had an associate working in Britain send over five dogs. From those five, Forbes chose two dogs named Laiko and Scott to train for the film.