Birthdate: May 31, 1960
Birthplace: Columbus, Ohio, USA
Mark Dindal (birthname: Mark Louis Dindal) has been an animated film director—after twelve years from 1981 to 1993 (mostly at Disney) as an effects animator, visual effects supervisor, and head animator—since his short film made to accompany The Rocketeer (1991), followed by his debut feature as director and story writer, Cats Don’t Dance (1997), the only fully animated feature produced by Turner Feature Animation and marking the final film credit for Gene Kelly, featuring the voices of Scott Bakula, Jasmine Guy, Natalie Cole, Kathy Najimy, Hal Holbrook, Don Knotts, George Kennedy, Rene Auberjonois, and David Johansen, and which was released to poor box office ($3.5 million on $32 million costs) for distributor Warner Bros.
Dindal was originally hired as co-director and then took over as sole director of Walt Disney Feature Animation’s animated comedy, The Emperor’s New Groove (2000), based on a screenplay by David Reynolds and a story co-written (with Dindal) by Chris Williams, starring the voices of David Spade, John Goodman, Eartha Kitt, Patrick Warburton, and Wendie Malick, and grossing $169.7 million worldwide, prompting a three-season TV series, The Emperor’s New School (2006-2008), which Dindal created.
Dindal was director, story writer (with Mark Kennedy), character designer, and voice actor of Walt Disney Feature Animation’s comedy, Chicken Little (2005), with the voice cast of Zach Braff, Joan Cusack, Dan Molina, Steve Zain, Garry Marshall, Amy Sedaris, Mark Walton, and Don Knotts, grossing a good $314.4 million worldwide.
After serving as story artist on Paramount Animation’s/Nickelodeon Movies’ $120-million-grossing animated feature, Wonder Park (2019), Dindal was director only of the Sony Pictures/Columbia Pictures/Alcon Entertainment animated feature, The Garfield Movie (2024), based on Jim Davis’s Garfield comic strip and starring the voices of Chris Pratt, Samuel L. Jackson, Hannah Waddingham, Ving Rhames, Nicholas Hoult, Cecile Strong, and Snoop Dogg.
Mark Dindal was born in Columbus, Ohio, and was raised in Syracuse, New York, by his mother and father, who practiced art as a hobby and taught Dindal to draw. Dindal attended and graduated from Jamesville-DeWitt High School, where he studied art, and created comic strips and shorts. Dindal studied animation at the California Institute of the Arts. Dindal has been married to Sammie Maeda since 1981; the couple has one daughter, Leanna. Dindal’s height is 5’ 9”.
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Influences: Mark Dindal has said that his major influences as a child were Disney movies Warner Bros. Looney Tunes, and most memorably, Disney’s The Sword in the Stone (1963).
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