Fly Me to the Moon (2008 film)

Fly Me to the Moon is a 2008 animated science fiction comedy film about three flies who stowaway aboard Apollo 11 and travel to the Moon. It was directed by Ben Stassen and written by Domonic Paris. The film was released in digital 3-D in Belgium on 30 January 2008, and in the US and Canada on 15 August. The film was also released in IMAX 3-D in the US and Canada on 8 August. The film serves as a fictionalized retelling of the 1969 Apollo 11 mission by incorporating a story of three young flies that stow away on the rocket to fulfill their dream of going up to the moon, while their families take on a group of Soviet flies who try to sabotage the mission.

Fly Me to the Moon was produced by nWave Pictures in association with Illuminata Pictures, and distributed by Summit Entertainment in the United States. The film received generally negative reviews from critics and was a box office disappointment, only grossing $41.7 million against a $25 million budget.

Plot

The narrator explains that in 1957, the Soviet Union launched Earth's first satellite Sputnik 1 into orbit. In 1961, when NASA was putting a chimpanzee aboard Mercury Atlas 5, cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first person to go to space. Feeling the sense of urgency to overtake the Soviets in the space race, U.S. President John F. Kennedy made a statement toward a joint session of Congress on May 25, 1961, stating that before the decade is out, he plans to launch a man to the Moon and return him safely to the Earth.