A Bug's Life is a 1998 American animated comedy film produced by Pixar Animation Studios for Walt Disney Pictures. It is Pixar's second feature-length film, following Toy Story (1995). The film was directed by John Lasseter, co-directed by Andrew Stanton, and produced by Darla K. Anderson and Kevin Reher, from a screenplay written by Stanton, Donald McEnery, and Bob Shaw, and a story conceived by Lasseter, Stanton, and Joe Ranft. It stars the voices of Dave Foley, Kevin Spacey, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and Hayden Panettiere. In the film, a misfit ant named Flik looks for "tough warriors" to save his ant colony from a protection racket run by a gang of grasshoppers. However, the "warriors" he brings back are a troupe of Circus Bugs. The film's plot was initially inspired by Aesop's fable The Ant and the Grasshopper.