David Bowers (director)


David Bowers is a British film director and screenwriter, originally from Stockport, Greater Manchester, in the United Kingdom.

Early life

Bowers studied fine art at Chester School of Art and animation at West Surrey College of Art and Design. His first job was on Who Framed Roger Rabbit, as an inbetweener, under director Richard Williams.

Career

After Roger Rabbit, Bowers worked at Cosgrove Hall on the cult favourite television shows Danger Mouse and Duckula before moving to London to work for Steven Spielberg's Amblimation studio. He worked as an animator on ', before going freelance to work on advertisements and features. Bowers later returned to Amblimation, to work on early story development, and as a supervising animator on Balto.
With the closing of Amblimation, and the founding of DreamWorks Animation, Bowers moved to Glendale, California in 1997, to work as a story artist on The Prince of Egypt and The Road to El Dorado. It was during this period that he met Aardman's Nick Park and Peter Lord, who asked him to help storyboard Aardman's first feature length film, the critically acclaimed Chicken Run. He was ultimately credited as storyboard supervisor.
After Chicken Run, Bowers moved between Los Angeles and Bristol, United Kingdom, working on several DreamWorks and Aardman projects, including the hit CG animated comedy Shark Tale and the Oscar winning ', before directing his first feature, Flushed Away, with Sam Fell.
He wrote/directed a big screen adaptation of Osamu Tezuka's classic Astro Boy for Imagi Animation Studios and Summit Entertainment, that was released in October 2009. Bowers directed ', his first live action film, which was released in cinemas on 25 March 2011.
He also directed the third film in the series, ', as well as the fourth film, . Bowers was developing a live action film adaptation of the popular show by Nickelodeon, Rugrats, for Paramount Pictures, under the production of Paramount Players in April 2019, for an unscheduled release on January 29, 2021, before being pulled from the schedule in November 2019.

Filmography