March of the Cuddly-Wuddly Documentaries

(Ultimately, "Family" stayed and "Celebration" took an electric slide.)

"They were respectful of our knowledge and passion for the place," says Robertson.

Also, in postproduction, Paramount Classics executives wanted to use a young A-list actor for the movie's storyteller -- the better to reach the youthful target audience, but Robertson insisted on a female, because "to me, it's a maternal story."

She got her way, but after they tried various candidates, "we found that with the young storytellers, you just didn't believe them. They had wispy, feminine voices. They just could not carry the depth and gravitas of the place, the epic-ness of it. So I said we need a low alto voice, we need an older woman, we need a wise, mother ice woman."

Hence the Queen Latifah casting. But when the studio hired television comedy writer Kristin Gore (who has written for "Saturday Night Live" and "Futurama" and is Al Gore's daughter) to create some contemporary chatter for their new storyteller, Robertson was unhappy with the material.

"There was this idea to write lines for Latifah and how she would speak, which I had a lot of problems with. I said, 'I think that's wrong, to have street talk.' We tried a little bit of that but we got rid of almost all of it. It wasn't appropriate."

But in the end, she declares herself to be fully satisfied with the result.

"We spent 15 years in the Arctic watching these animals, and discovering brand-new things about them that no one had ever known or seen," she says, "living with them in their space, seeing them make new decisions, seeing them respond to climate change, up close and personal, and in the here and now. 'Arctic' really brought to the forefront the celebration and admiration that we had for these animals."

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So, lots of feel-good animal fun in the room. But what about the bottom line: Does Paramount Classics expect to see big box office on the back of "Arctic Tale"? What does the future hold for the fuzzumentary?

"By no means are we expecting 'March of the Penguins' numbers," says Megan Colligan, marketing president for Paramount Classics, which also distributed the Al Gore eco-documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth." But as a company, "it's important for us to put our money where our mouth is. We feel it's important people feel that just by going to the movie, they've done something. They've taken a step in the right direction." (Following the model they used for "An Inconvenient Truth," Paramount Classics is earmarking 5 percent of the movie's gross for a fund to benefit four pro-wildlife organizations.)

Weil of National Geographic Films puts it this way: "There's no shame in profit," he says. "We want to be wildly profitable, which is not exclusive from being mission-driven. Everything we do is tied to who we are. Authenticity and veracity and substance are really important to us."

The film unit has already made or acquired documentaries in other genres. Among their films: "God Grew Tired of Us," a 2006 documentary about three Sudanese refugees, and, for release later this year, Michael Apted's soccer documentary, "The Power of the Game." And it plans to continue producing and acquiring these projects at the approximate rate of four to six a year.

Both National Geographic and Discovery see filmgoers as having a strong appetite for wildlife films now as a reaction to what else Hollywood is churning out, and as more attention is paid to environmental concerns.

"As far as cinema audiences go, there is a massive hunger for authenticity," Leipzig says. "All of the big family films are computer generated to death. . . . What we really don't get is anything that's authentic, genuine and true." Leipzig says the culture at large cares more about "the planet, the world in which we live, and [has] a deep need to understand what's going in the environment, and other sub-societies and cultures. These are all attributes of what National Geographic has been doing for 120 years."

So, in effect, the fuzzfest is retro cool?

"Wouldn't that be nice?" says Leipzig. "Wouldn't that be lovely?"