The 5 Types of Animal Movies

At a few West Coast theaters this Friday, Diane Keaton’s dog weepie Darling Companion and the documentary Chimpanzee will make room in the theatrical line-up for one more animal movie, the docufiction Otter 501. That’s right. While the rest of the world was distracted by the latest superhero shawarma scandal, the rapidly growing field of wildlife documentaries produced a transmedia movie in a genre you might have never heard of. About otters. And in a few weeks, this spring’s primates, canines, and water weasels will migrate to the DVD shelf, replaced by their summer counterparts in Madagascar 3, Ice Age: Continental Drift, and Piranha 3DD. There will, in other words, always be a creature feature at the movie theater.
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