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MY DOG TULIP, the celebrated novel by J.R Ackerley, is being made into a full length animated feature by producers Norman Twain, Howard Kaminsky and Frank Pellegrino. Deanna Deignan will serve as co-producer and Allison Powell as coordinating Producer.

The film is financed independently and will be completed in August of 2008.

MY DOG TULIP is animated by Paul and Sandra Fierlinger who have been closely associated with PBS’ adult animation fare for the past 15 years, providing primetime TV specials such as Drawn from Memory (Best TV Feature Film at Annecy, France 1995), Still Life With Animated Dogs (2001) and A Room Nearby (2004); both recipients of the prestigious Peabody Award.

Paul Fierlinger is the film’s director, screen writer and sole animator; Sandra is his background and image painter. They both draw and paint on a Wacom tablet, using the 2D animation software Mirage by Bauhaus. This film will be the first animated feature ever to be entirely hand drawn and painted utilizing paperless computer technology.

Christopher Plummer, Lynn Redgrave, Isabella Rosselini, Brian Murray, Paul Hecht, Peter Gerety, and Euan Morton provided the voices for the full-length animated feature, which had to be recorded before the animation could proceed. MY DOG TULIP began voice recording AUGUST 16th, 2006 in New York City and has been in production since May 16, 2006.

The original music score and sound design is the work of John Avarese who has been the composer of all Fierlinger productions for the past 12 years.

J.R Ackerley, the book’s British author and distinguished man of letters, hardly thought of himself as a dog lover when, in middle age, he came to adopt an Alsatian bitch, he named Tulip. To his surprise, she turned out to be the love of his life, the ideal companion he had been searching for in vain for years.

MY DOG TULIP is a bittersweet retrospective account of their fourteen-year relationship. In vivid and sometimes startling detail, the film shows Tulip’s often erratic behavior, canine tastes, and Ackerley’s determined efforts to ensure an existence of perfect happiness for Tulip.

MY DOG TULIP was originally published in England in 1956. It is now published in this country by the New York Review of Books in their Classics Series and is the series’ best selling book.

“This is a profound and beautiful love story. It just happens to be between a man and his dog” said producer Howard Kaminsky.

“It certainly is all that,” said producer Norman Twain, “but it’s also an account of the complexity of all human relationships with the inherent tendency of each one of us to desire everyone else to be as we are.”

While most animation is for children, this film is being directed toward the adult sensibility.