Schilling as Buttercup Cary Elwes as Sir Handsome Marcelo Tubert as Laurent Douglas Urbanski as Head Rico Simonini as Tomcat Jo Ellison as Rosie Production Jiří Barta and Edgar Dutka wrote the script, originally titled Whose Birthday is it Today before it was renamed Toys in the Attic, from 1998 to 2000 with the intention of creating a story that was family-orientated, sellable to producers, and having elements of a child's imagination: "When I found an old exercise book with my drawing of a train made from old train tickets with a piece of cigarette for the smokestack, the kid in my imagination reappeared. Edgar and I remembered the games we used to play in strange forbidden places we found in our attics." Due to very short deadlines set by the producer, multiple stages of making Toys in the Attic, including pre-production, production, and post-production, happened at the same time. The film was made by a total of ten to fifteen of Prague art school graduates and Barta's colleagues and friends. Pre-production began in January 2007; it involved not only storyboarding but also creating the puppets and sets from a "huge amount of junk and antique stuff." The filming and animation took place from June 2007 to September 2008, which the final product contains 1,200 stills; and post-production was finished by early 2009. The main part of the film's animation is that of puppets animated by stop motion but there are also examples of clay animation in the character Šubrt and the objects of his room, special effects such as steam in traditional animation and the face of the plaster bust Hlava ("Head") was performed in pixilation and voiced in the original Czech audio by actor Jiří Lábus. Release The film was theatrically released on 5 March 2009 by CinemArt and was premiered at the New York International Children's Film Festival. It was also released on DVD, VOD and Blu-ray on November 23, 2009 by Magic Box. Reception CinemaArt released the film in the Czech Republic on 6 March 2009. Peter Debruge compared the film to Toy Story in a reviews for Variety, and complimented the animation: "despite their inflexible faces, Barta conceives all sorts of inventive ways to bring these inanimate objects to life. […] Should a given shot prove too tricky to accomplish practically, Barta has no qualms about using digital compositing to blend multiple stop-motion plates. Though