High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! A Bug's Life, officially trademarked as a bug's life, is a 1998 American CGI film produced by Pixar Animation Studios and released by Walt Disney Pictures and Buena Vista Distribution in the United States on November 25, 1998. A Bug's Life was the second Disney·Pixar feature film and the third American computer-animated film after Toy Story and Antz. It tells the tale of an oddball individualist ant who hires what he thinks are "warrior bugs" actually circus performers to fight off greedy grasshoppers. The film was directed by John Lasseter and is also the last film appearances of Madeline Kahn and Roddy McDowall. The story of A Bug's Life is a parody of Aesop's fable of The Ant and the Grasshopper. It is similar to the comedy Three Amigos, which is about out-of-work actors defending a town while thinking they're merely giving a performance. It also gives a nod to Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai (as well as its Hollywood remake, The Magnificent Seven), which is about Japanese villagers hiring a group of swordsmen to fight off rampaging bandits.