Holes (2003)

In this tense family drama, kids team up to escape from a brutal desert detention camp. Based on Louis Sachar’s Newberry Award-winning children’s novel, it tells of a warden at a juvenile detention center who has children dig large holes, claiming it builds character, when he is really looking for a legendary hidden treasure.

Genre – Drama

Director(s) – Andrew Davis

Writer(s) – Louis Sachar

Cast – Sigourney Weaver, John Voigt, Shia LaBeouf ,Tim Blake Nelson and Khleo Thomas

Blue Rider’s Role – Production Services

Distributor(s) – Walt Disney Pictures, Buena Vista International, Walden Media, Independent Films, Universal Pictures Benelux (Netherlands), Central Partnership (Russia), Gativideo (Argentina)

Release Date – 2003

Synopsis – It starts with a pair of stolen shoes that belonged to Clyde “Sweetfeet” Livingston (the Lakers’ Rick Fox), the fastest man in baseball. They drop from the sky and fall on the head of young Stanley Yelnats IV (Shia Labeouf) just in time for him to get arrested for theft. He winds up in a desert reformatory. He and his tent-mates aren’t rehabilitated but abused, forced to dig holes on the almost-lunar landscape. Allegedly it’s to “build character,” but actually its a search for legendary buried treasure.

The mystery about their search slowly unravels through flashbacks about Stanley’s family falling under a curse and Camp Green Lake becoming the arid resting place of possible treasure.

When Stanley and his friend Zero (Khleo Thomas) escape from camp, things get really heavy.

Boxoffice and DVD Sales
Budget: $20 million, Marketing: $20 million.
Worldwide Box Office: $71,406,573 ($67,406,573 domestic over 18 weeks on screens, $4 million overseas in 10 countries). It opened at $16,300,155, ranking #2 in the U.S. Widest U.S. distribution: 2452 screens. DVD Sales: 2.2 million units: $43 million. It grossed $2,345,021 in the U.K./Ireland/Malta market, $446,507 in Australia and $344,238 in Mexico. It was among the eight top boxoffice films in the U.S. for its first seven consecutive weeks. And it ranked #41 for all of 2003. It had the seventh-best-ever Easter opening weekend.

An article in the Los Angeles Times credited HOLES with significantly boosting Disney’s earnings.

Holes grossed $2,345,021 in the U.K./Ireland/Malta territory, $446,507 in Australia, $344,238 in Mexico, $344,238 in New Zealand and $103,177 in Russia. In one format or another it has been seen in 27 countries.

Netflix is recommending two more Blue Rider films to its millions of subscribers. Teen escape drama HOLES, starring Shia LaBeouf, Sigourney Weaver, Jon Voigt, Patricia Arquette and Khleo Thomas, is described thus: “Falsely accused of stealing sneakers, a nerdy teenager is sent to a detention camp, where he and the other delinquents are forced by the sadistic warden to dig holes as a character-building exercise. But what’s the real reason for all the digging?” Also recommended is travel comedy-adventure AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS, starring Steve Coogan and Jackie Chan, with dozens of cameos by the likes of John Cleese, Owen and Luke Wilson, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Kathy Bates. Netflix says: “Eccentric inventor Phineas Fogg bets the Minister of Science that he can circle the world in 80 days. He’s joined on his epic adventure by his valet (who’s actually a thief in disguise) and a beautiful artist they meet during a stop in Paris.” Walter Josten was co-executive producer and Blue Rider was a bridge lender on the latter and provided production services on the former.

Awards:
Holes was won two major awards and was nominated for nine others: Shia LaBeouf, Khleo Thomas and Noah Poletiek were all nominated for Young Artist Awards for their roles in Holes, and the film was nominated for Best Family Feature: Drama. Holes was also nominated as Best Family Film by the Broadcast Film Critics Association and the Las Vegas Film Critics Society. Shia LaBeouf was nominated for Breakthrough Male Performance in it at the MTV Movie Awards. Mark Benton Johnson won the COLA award for Best Location Professional of the Year. Cathy Sandrich and Amanda Mackey Johnson were nominated for the Artios Award for Best Casting for a Feature Comedy.

Viewers’ Ratings
As of Feb. 26, 2009, 15,696viewers rated Holes at the Internet Movie Database and more than 90.1% of them gave it a positive rating, with 19.0% rating it a perfect 10. All demographic groups gave it very positive ratings (higher than 6.9 out of 10), with the most enthusiastic being females under age 18 (rating it 8.4 out of 10), women 18-29 (7.9) and boys 17 and younger (7.6). As of April 25, 2008, 78.9% of 569 viewers at www.boxofficemojo.com rated it A or B.

Critics’ Kudos:
More than three-quarters of U.S. critics loved the film.

Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times: “Though it’s received just about every accolade authority figures have on offer, including the Newbery Medal, Louis Sachar’s young-adult novel Holes has become a literary phenomenon because of how fervently its target audience has embraced it. It’s now been turned into a movie with the younger crowd in mind, but older adults savvy enough to disregard labels will find it surprisingly rewarding.

“Working from a screenplay by Sachar himself, director Andrew Davis, best known for The Fugitive, has come up with a sweetly entertaining fable about strange doings in a juvenile correction facility in Texas that switches tones between the comic and the menacing. It’s a difficult but finally satisfying balancing act that succeeds, because Sachar’s presence ensured a fidelity to two of the keys to the book’s success. One is that Holes, as opposed to many films about young people, neither preaches nor panders. Shrewdly cast with kids who look like kids and are naturalistic performers into the bargain, it treats its teenage protagonists with complete seriousness, reserving its comic moments for those who look silliest to young adult eyes: the grown-ups.

“Holes also sticks closely to the book’s satisfyingly complex and incident-filled plot. A parable about curses laid and undone, about how everyone has the power to make his or her own destiny, it blends three stories that take place in Europe and America in this century and the last. And it finds room to include exotic fortunetellers, Old West bandits, a forbidden interracial romance featuring West Wing’s Dule Hill, the curative powers of onions and the dangers of Texas yellow-spotted lizards–among
other things.

“Holes is successful for the most old-fashioned of reasons: It’s got an involving, adventurous story to tell and the wherewithal to tell it correctly. And while young adults may think this is intended only for them, in truth it’s their elders who are especially starved for this kind of entertainment.”

Desson Thompson, Washington Post: “A wonderfully dark fairy tale.”

Jan Stuart, Newsday: “Director Andrew Davis bends and stretches the film stylistically according to the demands of the moment. Cartoon villains Jon Voight, Sigourney Weaver and Tim Blake Nelson keep one foot planted in breezy caricature while the parallel interracial stories keep the other planted in a heightened realm of social reality. For the most part, it pays off. Holes is a wayward charmer.”

A.O. Scott, New York Times: “Louis Sachar’s 1998 novel Holes has attracted a fanatical following among children in the middle grades. Since these tend to be the most passionate and also the pickiest members of the reading public, their fierce regard for Mr. Sachar’s book should not be taken lightly. There is a clear moral scheme balanced by morally complex characters, irreverent humor combined with earnest emotion and, most of all, enough plot to satisfy the addiction to narrative that affects so many of our youth today. The central story–of a boy named Stanley Yelnats, unjustly sent to a camp for delinquents for stealing a pair of baseball cleats–sprouts wild tendrils of invention that reach from the Old Country (Latvia) to the Old West. Their elegant, suspenseful resolution makes this novel a masterpiece of juvenile magic realism.

“Mr. Sachar, who wrote the screenplay, has betrayed neither his own imagination nor that of his audience. Director Andrew Davis has turned the book’s spare, gritty allegory into a shaggy-dog saga that is sometimes hectic but always surprising and never easy, predictable or false. The tough, prickly camaraderie among the boys and their solidarity in the face of adult cruelty give the picture its heart and also its pedigree, which includes movies like Stalag 17, The Great Escape,Cool Hand Luke and, more recently, Chicken Run. The weaselly Mr. Nelson, the growly, strutting Mr. Voight and the chilly, feline Ms. Weaver form a fine menagerie of grown-up corruption.

Holes is one of the few recent movies I have seen that plunged me into that rare, giddy state of pleasurable confusion, of not knowing what would happen next, which I associate with the reading and moviegoing experiences of my own childhood. But there is no reason that children should have a monopoly on this primal, wonderful experience.

“Holes is certainly the thing that schoolchildren will drag their parents to see on spring-break afternoons, but the parents who are dragged will find themselves watching the best film released by a major American studio so far this year.”

Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly: “[Some] credit for the page-to-screen success of Holes goes to the movie’s invitingly natural, brightly colored visual style. Like its much more famous cousins in best-sellerdom, the Harry Potter books, the story balances seriousness, silliness, and bravery, and what Holes lacks in Potter magical grandeur (and budget) on screen, it makes up for in intimacy and its affection for the look of sunbaked earth and dirty-faced kids. Even with the curse that looms over the Yelnats family (the legacy of a pig-stealing great-great-grandfather), home life with Stanley’s father (Henry Winkler), mother (Siobhan Fallon Hogan), and grandfather (Nathan Davis) looks cozy. So, too, does the parallel tall tale set in the 19th-century Old West, in which a sweet schoolteacher (Patricia Arquette), once wooed by a courtly onion seller (Dule Hill), transforms herself into a daring outlaw called Kissin’ Kate Barlow.

“The young actors play their roles with the relaxed focus of regular boys. The adult actors participate with the same gleeful commitment as the fancy British thespians who totter through Potter. Honoring the literary ground beneath it, spotted yellow lizards and all, the movie Holes is easy to dig.”

Claudia Puig, USA Today: “It’s great to see an action-adventure family film with heart as well as humor, whimsy alongside wisdom, and a compelling narrative. Director Andrew Davis captures the story on film just as one imagines it while reading the page-turner.

“Film newcomer Shia LaBeouf (of Disney Channel’s Even Stevens) strikes just the right notes as Stanley, a vulnerable, good-hearted guy with rotten luck. Khleo Thomas is poignant as Zero, the tiny ward of the state who silently endures the verbal abuse of a counselor. Jon Voight as the sadistic Mr. Sir is pitch-perfect. Sporting a slicked-back, strawberry-blond pompadour and a crimson neck, he embodies the character as written in Sachar’s book. Tim Blake Nelson does a fine job as a phony-baloney counselor.

“Holes pays homage to the book by preserving its potency and building upon its strong foundation. It’s hard to imagine a reader who wouldn’t approve.”

Tom Long, Detroit News: “This is the sort of family film people keep hoping Hollywood would make. Well, they made it. Go see it.”

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: “Holes is the children’s movie that shows that children’s movies don’t have to be obvious. It eschews obvious effects, but even more impressively, it tells a story without an obvious moral. It assumes that kids can wrestle with a fairly complicated narrative and draw their own conclusions. The result is a children’s movie that adults can take kids to and come away with more than the twin satisfactions of doing a good deed and knowing that good deed is over with. As kids’ films go, it’s a thoughtful, superior piece of work, an entertaining picture that youngsters can enjoy on first viewing and perhaps fully grow into as they get a bit older.

“Holes benefits from director Andrew Davis’ penchant for naturalism. He allows for outlandish characterizations but keeps the movie real, not permitting it to degenerate into silliness, despite the inclusion of typical kid-movie jokes about smelly feet and flatulence.

“Davis and Sachar gradually bring together the modern and the Old West story lines in a way that’s both inevitable and smooth. Along the way, they blend concerns that are modern in nature (racism, prison reform) into settings that are more classical than contemporary in atmosphere. Even the reform school scenes don’t feel strictly contemporary but rather as if they existed in some kind of limbo outside time.
Ultimately, Holes conveys a mystical aura, a sense of history repeating itself, of rights being wronged across time, of recurring themes in the movements of people’s lives, and of the importance of friendship, family, loyalty and justice. It’s in this aspect that Holes is truly satisfying. It’s one of the few children’s movies that kids and parents can discuss and find little treasures beneath its surface.”

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: “Holes is a movie so strange that it escapes entirely from the family genre and moves into fantasy. Like Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, it has fearsome depths and secrets. Based on the much-honored young adult’s novel by Louis Sachar, it has been given the top-shelf treatment: The director is Andrew Davis (The Fugitive) and the cast includes not only talented young stars but also weirdness from adults such as Jon Voight, Sigourney Weaver, Tim Blake Nelson and Patricia Arquette.

“In a time when mainstream action is rigidly contained within formulas, maybe there’s more freedom to be found in a young people’s adventure. Holes jumps the rails, leaves all expectations behind. I found it original and intriguing. It’ll be a change after dumbed-down, one-level family stories, but a lot of kids in the upper grades will have read the book, and no doubt their younger brothers and sisters have had it explained to them. (If you doubt the novel’s Harry Potter-like penetration into the youth culture, ask a seventh-grader who Armpit is.)

“Shia LaBeouf and Khleo Thomas carry the movie with an unforced conviction, and successfully avoid playing cute. As they wander in the desert and discover the keys to their past and present destinies, they develop a partnership, which, despite the fantastical material, seems like the real thing.

“The whole movie generates a surprising conviction. No wonder young readers have embraced it so eagerly: It doesn’t condescend, and it founds its story on recognizable human nature. There are all sorts of undercurrents, such as the edgy tension between the Warden and Mr. Sir, that add depth and intrigue; Voight and Weaver don’t simply play caricatures.

“Davis has always been a director with a strong visual sense, and the look of Holes has a noble, dusty loneliness. We feel we are actually in a limitless desert. The cinematographer, Stephen St. John, thinks big, and frames his shots for an epic feel that adds weight to the story. I walked in expecting a movie for 13-somethings, and walked out feeling challenged and satisfied.”

James Bernardinelli, Reelviews: “It’s smart, strange, unpredictable, and defies the formulas that typically define this sort of motion picture.”

Lawrence Toppman, Charlotte Observer: “A richly satisfying adaptation of Louis Sachar’s novel.”

J.R. Jones, Chicago Reader: “Louis Sachar’s Holes, which won a 1998 National Book Award and the 1999 Newbery Medal, is the kind of playground word-of-mouth hit that sends adults scurrying into the children’s section at Borders. Read magazine recently ranked it the hottest kids’ book, hotter even than Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. When I looked for it at the Chicago Public Library, nearly every one of 182 copies citywide had been checked out. Sachar, a 48-year-old attorney in Austin, Texas, has published 19 children’s books, including the durable Marvin Redpost series, but none of them has caught on like Holes, which is now a Disney feature too.

“For a kids’ tale, it has a surprisingly sophisticated narrative structure, with three interwoven story lines that unfold over the course of more than a century. One of these involves an interracial romance that ends in a lynching, but the darkest of the three subplots — the one that attracts kids like sugar draws flies — is set at Camp Green Lake, a boot camp in sun-baked west Texas where juvenile inmates are marched out daily onto a dry lake bed and each forced to dig a hole five feet square and five feet deep.

“For a Disney movie, Holes is mercifully low in saccharine. Camp Green Lake isn’t exactly the Audy Home — there’s no profanity or drug use, and no one’s pinned down and sodomized in the shower — but both the agony of hard labor and the loneliness of incarceration are oppressively real, and Stanley’s fellow inmates are verbally cruel and physically aggressive, any trace of compassion broiled away by the relentless sun.

“Louis Sachar was not an experienced screenwriter, but director Andrew Davis insisted that no one but Sachar could write the script for Holes.The film’s fidelity to the plot and tone of the book is a credit to them both. The three administrators, for example, are played neither for laughs nor for gothic chills; just like in the book, they’re genuine — if seriously warped — people. The inmates, played by a cast of excellent young actors, ring similarly true. Shia LaBeouf as Stanley and Khleo Thomas as his street-smart pal Zero are particularly good — they endow the boot-camp story with all the gravity of Cool Hand Luke.

“And like a lot of great children’s stories, Holes evokes a world in which kids have their own language and moral code that protects them from the lies and compromises of the adult world. That’s a salutary vision for children of any age.”

Chuck Wilson, L.A. Weekly: “Although parents of small children are advised to give the film an advance look, Holes may nudge older kids toward that most ancient of after-school distractions: reading.”

Bill Gallo, Dallas Observer: “Holes is a nicely made movie for kids, as entertaining as it is thought-provoking and–thanks to director Davis–a bit harder-edged than the usual Disney fare.”

Laura Miller, Salon.com: “Aided by Sigourney Weaver and Jon Voight as evil grown-ups, this adaptation of the beloved children’s book crackles with un-Harry-like life.

“Louis Sachar’s fiercely beloved kids novel, “Holes,” is a fairy tale about juvenile delinquents, a dash of “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” with a smidgen of “Cool Hand Luke.” It’s got a gypsy curse, Wild West outlaws and buried treasure, but it steps to a funky beat. Andrew Davis’ film adaptation sticks pretty close to the book, probably because Sachar himself wrote the screenplay. The movie is a similarly ingenious clockwork contraption that interlocks the most unlikely combination of stories without ever jamming its gears.

“As Stanley, LaBeouf is a likable actor, but, minus the extra pounds, perhaps not enough of a misfit to win the identification of the under-13 set. Besides, Thomas, with his elfin chin, mop of nappy hair and watchful eyes, steals every scene he’s in. You don’t have to know anything about Zero’s past to tell that this kid has been through stuff that would level most adults. At one point he confesses to Stanley that he can’t read and asks the older boy to teach him. When Stanley begs off, it’s hard to see how he can withstand Zero’s cool, level gaze. Between the heart-rending Thomas and the scenery-chewing Voight and Weaver, LaBeouf has a hard time making much of an impression.

“Holes the film manages to incorporate all of Holes the book without suffering from a single slow patch, a sharp contrast to Chris Columbus’ lugubriously dutiful Harry Potter adaptations. That’s all about the source material — Sachar is a more expert and economical storyteller than J.K. Rowling, and his boys feel decidedly more real. They’re complicated creatures, capable of both bullying and generosity as they negotiate the treacherous path to manhood, one hole at a time.”

Ed Park, Village Voice: “Andrew Davis’s quirky Holes (adapted by Louis Sachar from his popular children’s novel) brims with storytelling flourishes and gently deployed life lessons that even accompanying adults may dig; to its credit, the title’s symbolic sense still stumps me. Full of little surprises, unearthed in leisurely style, Holes (to paraphrase the poet Richard Howard) suggests a metaphor for metaphor itself.”

Kimberley Jones, Austin Chronicle: “One way to make sure those Hollywood types don’t foul up the movie based on your book is to write the screenplay yourself, which is exactly what Austin author Louis Sachar did with the film adaptation of his much-loved, award-winning kids’ book Holes. The film is an almost literal translation of the book, which will make fans happy, but newcomers may be a little befuddled, due to the delightfully twisty nature of the story.

“Behind a backdrop of dusty, barren Sahara-ness (beautifully shot by Stephen St. John), the gang works day in and day out, sweating, conniving, goofing around, and, yes, even character building. The boys are all wonderfully cast. Parents unfamiliar with the book may be shocked at the decidedly dark tone of the material – these are children doing hard labor – but kids will dig it, largely because both the book and the film are premised on an assumption of their inherent toughness, something any kid will not only appreciate, but respect. Frankly, I’m shocked that Disney, frequent purveyor of sleeping beauties and singing animated animals, is the studio behind this wonderfully black comedy/morality tale for children, but maybe Disney, too, saw past the material’s deliciously macabre bent to find also a thrilling little essay on friendship, fate, and the restorative powers of onions.”

Jack Matthews, New York Daily News: “A great family movie, with a terrifically empathetic young hero, strong messages about the powers of familial love and friendship, buried treasure and enough action to keep the little ones from getting bored.”

Major Cast and Crew Credits and Awards:
Directed by Andrew Davis (Collateral Damage, Under Siege, The Perfect Murder, The Guardian, Chain Reaction, Above the Law, and Golden Globe and DGA Best Director noms for The Fugitive).

Written by Louis Sachar (from his award-winning young people’s novel).

Stars Sigourney Weaver (Annie Hall, Ghost Busters, The Village, Dave, Death and the Maiden, The Year of Living Dangerously, Baby Mama, Vantage Point, Be Kind Rewind, Infamous; Oscar nominated for Alien, Gorillas in the Mist and Working Girl; 14 other awards and 19 other nominations for works including Galaxy Quest, Alien, Aliens, Alien: Resurrection, The Ice Storm, Copycat, A Map of the World, Half Moon Street, Imaginary Heroes and Heartbreakers; appeared in 33 other films and TV projects); John Voigt (won Oscar for Coming Home; Oscar nominated for Midnight Cowboy, Runaway Train and Ali; 14 awards and 12 other nominations for works including Enemy of the State, The Rainmaker, The Champ, Uprising and Deliverance; appeared in The Odessa File, Heat, Pearl Harbor, Mission Impossible, Zoolander, The Manchurian Candidate, The General, National Treasure and 56 other films and TV projects); Shia LaBeouf (10 awards and 16 nominations for works including Holes, Bobby, Even Stevens, A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, Transformers, Disturbia, Surf’s Up, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and Lets Love Hate; appeared in I Robot, Constantine, The Greatest Game Ever Played, Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd land 66 episodes of Even Stevens); Tim Blake Nelson (three awards and seven nominations for works including O Brother Where Art Thou, Warm Springs, Eye of God and The Grey Zone; appeared in The Thin Red Line, Donnie Brasco, Syriana, Meet the Fockers, Wonderland, Minority Report, The Good Girl, The Astronaut Farmer and 25 other films and TV projects); Khleo Thomas (Best Supporting Actor Young Artist Award nom for Holes; Walking Tall, Friday After Next, How to Get the Man’s Foot Outta Your Ass, Roll Bounce and Dirty).

Cast also includes Roma Maffia (Married to the Mob, I am Sam, Eraser, Kiss the Girls, The Heidi Chronicles, Double Jeopardy, The Nick of Time, The Paper, Smithereens, 82 episodes of Profiler, 13 episodes of Chicago Hope, 69 episodes of Nip/Tuck and 40 other movies and TV projects); Patricia Arquette (three Golden Globe noms, four awards and nine other nominations for works including True Romance, Stigmata, Medium, Wildflower and The Hi-Lo Country; appeared in Ed Wood, Lost Highway, Bringing Out the Dead, Little Nicky, Uncle Buck, The Indian Runner, Fast Food Nation, Beyond Rangoon, The Badge, Deeper Than Deep, Tiptoes and 25 other films and TV projects); Eartha Kitt (over 60 years she has appeared in 60 movies and TV projects including Boomerang, Erik the Viking, Fatal Instinct, The Pink Chiquitas, St. Louis Blues, Friday Foster, Casbah, Anna Lucasta and Up the Chastity Belt; she won four awards and three nominations for I Spy, Living Single, The Emperor’s New School and The Emperor’s New Groove); Henry Winkler (won two Golden Globes and eight other awards and 13 nominations for works including Night Shift, The Waterboy, Clifford’s Puppy Days, Happy Days, The Practice, MacGyver and Heroes; appeared in I Could Never Be Your Woman, Scream, The One and Only, Click, Down to You, The Lords of Flatbush, 15 episodes of Arrested Development, eight episodes of Out of Practice, four episodes of Laverne & Shirley, 255 episodes of Happy Days and 53 other movies and TV projects); Siobhan Fallon Hogan (two Best Supporting Actress noms for Dancer in the Dark; Forrest Gump, Men in Black, The Negotiator, Fools Rush In, Dogville, Boiler Room, Striptease, Krippendorf’s Tribe, 20 episodes of Saturday Night Live, three episodes of Rescue Me and 27 other movies and TV projects); Nathan Davis (Risky Business, Chain Reaction, Thief, Poltergeist III, Dunston Checks In, Let’s Go to Prison, Thief, The Package); Rick Fox (He Got Game, Resurrection, Blue Chips, Eddie, 11 episodes of Oz, six episodes of Love Inc., five episodes of One Tree Hill and six episodes of Dirt); Dule Hill (two awards and nine nominations for The West Wing, two noms for 10.5 and Psych; appeared in She’s All That, Men of Honor, The Guardian, Edmond, Sugar Hill, Sexual Life, 147 episodes of The West Wing, 31 episodes of Psych); Jake M. Smith (Disposal, Ash Tuesday, Spinning Into Butter, four episodes of the three Law & Order series); Byron Cotton (N.Y.P.D. Blue); Brenden Jefferson (Crimson Tide, Senseless; Young Artist Award nominations for Thea and The Other Me); Miguel Castro (Crazy/Beautiful, America 101, The Shield); Max Kasch (Red Eye, Waiting, The Greatest Game Ever Played, Shrooms, Right at Your Door); Noah Poletiek (Road to Redemption, The Blue Light; Young Artist Award nomination for Holes); Steve Kozlowski (Good Will Hunting, Collateral, Thirteen, Hero Wanted, four episodes of Line of Fire) and Ken Davitian (2007 MTV Movie Award Best Fight Award nomination for Borat; appeared in S.W.A.T., A Man Apart, Frogtown II, Bikini Summer, Talkin’ Dirty After Dark, Meet the Spartans, Lucky You, Red Sun Rising and 44 other films and TV series).

Executive Producers: Marty P. Ewing (Blades of Glory, She’s the Man, The Prize Winner of Defiance Ohio, Ladder 49, Man of the House; worked on Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, The Flintstones, Flashdance, Urban Cowboy and All of Me; won 1984 DGA Award for Terms of Endearment) and Louis Phillips (Zodiac, Miss Potter, Urban Legends: Bloody Mary, Basic, Pathfinder, License to Wed).

Producers: Mike Medavoy (The 6th Day, Vertical Limit, Basic, Zodiac, Stealth, Miss Potter, Pathfinder, License to Wed, All the King’s Men; won 2006 Hollywood Film Festival Producer of the Year Award); Lowell D. Blank (associate producer on The Guardian, Collateral Damage, A Perfect Murder); Andrew Davis (Chain Reaction, Steal Big Steal Little, The Package, Above the Law, Code of Silence) and Teresa Tucker-Davies (Collateral Damage, A Perfect Murder, Chain Reaction, Steal Big Steal Little).

Original Music by Joel McNeely (won Emmy for The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles; another award and two other nominations for that film, Air Force One and Return to Never Land; scored The Avengers, Vegas Vacation, Flipper, Ghosts of the Abyss, Soldier, Terminal Velocity, Mulan II and 44 other films and TV projects).

Cinematography by Stephen St. John (The Guardian, Agent Orange, Just Legal; worked on Mission Impossible III, Domino, Men in Black, The Matrix Reloaded, Unforgiven, Die Hard 2, Man on Fire, Godzilla and 54 other films).

Film Editing by Thomas J. Nordberg (Alexander, The Guardian, Any Given Sunday, What Women Want, Scary Movie 2, Drillbit Taylor, U Turn) and Jeffrey Wolf (Billy Madison, A Dirty Shame, Cecil B. DeMented, Julian Po, The Ref, Beautiful Girls, Life, Out Cold, Who’s the Man and eight episodes of Tales from the Darkside).

Production Design by Maher Ahmad (Fever Pitch, Miss Congeniality 2: Armed & Famous, Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, U.S. Marshalls, The Guardian, Chain Reaction, Above the Law and The Fugitive).

Art Direction by Andrew Max Cahn (Rush Hour 2, Red Eye, Mod Squad, If These Walls Could Talk, The Guardian, Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, Cursed, Miss Congeniality 2: Armed & Fabulous, Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants 2, The House of Yes ).

Costume Design by Aggie Rodgers (1986 Oscar nom for The Color Purple; won 1984 Saturn Award for Star Wars: Episode VI: Return of the Jedi; nominated for 2006 Costume Designers Guild Award for Rent; costumed The Fugitive, Beetle Juice, American Graffiti, The Hurricane, The Conversation, Evolution, The Witches of Eastwick, The Rainmaker, Benny & Joon, Mr. Holland’s Opus, Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, Cocoon, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Grand Canyon and 29 other films and TV projects).

Special Effects Coordinator: Larry Fioritto (Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, Man on the Moon, Thank You for Smoking, Frailty, The Client, Big Mama’s House, Knight Rider, Very Bad Things, Ladder 49, Two Days in the Valley; 116 other films and TV projects).

Visual Effects Supervisor: William Mesa (won three awards and two nominations for works including The Fugitive, The Last Samurai and Inside the Third Reich; Won 1988 Technical Achievement Oscar; did effects on Stand By Me, The Italian Job, Blood Diamond, The Waterboy, Driving Miss Daisy, Megaforce, Army of Darkness, Deep Blue Sea, Rambo III, Collateral Damage, White Chicks, Under Seige and 57 other films and TV projects; ).

Links:
Official Site (Disney)

Internet Movie Database entry for Holes

Two Holes trailers (in 3 formats) & links to 5 more