On paper, the film version of "Annie" looks more slick and chic than its relatively unpretentious stage sister which has been playing to packed houses on Broadway and barnstorming the country in various national companies for the past four years, including one coming to San Diego's Fox Theatre for an 11-night run beginning Wednesday.
          Budgeted around $35 million, the film, now in post-production and set for release next June, has been a monumental undertaking on the part of Rastar Films Inc. and Columbia Pictures. The largest and most expensive movie set since "Camelot," for instance, was built at Burbank Studios to mime the New York street in the "Easy Street" number at a cost of $1 million. A baronial Mansion with 130 rooms and 19 baths built in 1928 for $10.5 million in Monmouth, N.J., was restored to glory for six weeks to serve as Daddy Warbuck's Fifth Avenue residence.
          And, the search for the film Annie involved casting director Garrison True auditioning 8,000 song-and-dance moppets before finally selecting Aileen Quinn, a 9-year-old from Yardley, Pa, who had been understudying the orphans in the Broadway production. Even choosing a dog for the role of Sandy -- which in the original stage production was a mongrel plucked from a pound in Connecticut -- was a big production. After a prolonged search, the moviemakers settled on an Otterhound, a British dog with a complex ancestry that somewhat resembles a bloodhound and is noted for a wiry shaggy coat, long pendulous ears, a scowling expression and a keen scent.
          Also spectacularly, the filming of "Annie" involved a sensational stunt scene undertaken 200 feet above an abandoned drawbridge in Newark, N.J., calling for Annie to be rescued by Punjab, Daddy Warbuck's mysterious Indian servant, swinging from an autocopter by his unwound 10-foot turban.
          The role of Punjab (played by Geoffrey Holder) is one of the many things the movie "Annie" will have that the stage show didn't. Four new musical production numbers also have been added: "We've Got Annie," "Sign," "Dumb Dog" and "Let's Go to the Movies." The latter features Annie and Warbuck's secretary Grace (Ann Reinking) dancing at Radio City Music Hall with 36 Rockettes, 54 regular dancers and 64 extras.
          The creative team that is bringing "Annie" to the screen is strictly Hollywood, not New York. John Huston is directing his very first musical and fourth collaboration with producer Ray Stark. The film, according to Stark, has a new attitude that he interprets as slightly removed from the melodramatic mood of the comic strip and the caricature flavor of the stage show.
          "It is basically a love story," Stark noted early in production. "It's the story of a little girl, an orphan who dreams and then lives the impossible dream. And of Daddy Warbucks who is shown by Annie that there are other things in life besides money and power. 'Annie' is the story of the love that grows between these two unlikely people.
          "They are real people, too, in the picture," he added. "A writer like Carol Sobieski (who wrote the screenplay) doesn't write musical comedies. She is an important dramatic writer. She has kept the warmth and the humor, the basic theme and emotional thrust of the show and rooted it in reality. Not realism, but reality."
          Sobieski has previously written screenplays for "Honeysuckle Rose" and "Casey's Shadow" and is the recipient of three Writer's Guild awards for her work on television. Arlene Phillips, the British choreographer who does "The Benny Hill Show" and has worked in film and television commercials, is choreographing "Annie." Richard Moore ("Myra Breckinridge," "Sometimes a Great Notion") is the director of photography.
          Not the least of the movie "Annie's" difference from the stage show is in the casting.
          The Daddy Warbucks character in the play is an actor who could do walk-ons as the Incredible Hulk -- big and intimidating. In the film, Warbucks is played by considerably less intimidating Albert Finney. Carol Burnett is the flamboyant Miss Hannigan, the overseer of Annie's orphanage who hates orphans.
          Bernadette Peters, the actress who was first going to play Annie as an adult in the original Broadway show, and Tim Curry, the British actor noted for the risque Dr. Frank N. Furter in "The Rocky Horror Picture Show," are cast as the pair who plot a get-rich-quick scheme posing as Annie's parents. Edward Herrmann, who won accolades for his portrayal of Franklin Delano Roosevelt on television's "Eleanor and Franklin" and "Eleanor and Franklin: The White House Years," appears as FDR in the movie.
          The title has been changed. The movie will be called "Annie, the Movie of Tomorrow." But has the "Annie" story been changed? Basically, no. Set in New York during the Depression, the film opens with Annie in an orphanage waiting in hopes that her parents will one day return and reclaim her. But Annie's salvation comes in the form of wealthy Daddy Warbucks, who follows his press agent's suggestion that having an orphan around the mansion would be good public relations.
          Warbuck's secretary, Grace, whisks Annie and Sandy off to the mansion and a new life. Still, Annie wants to find her real parents, and Warbucks goes on the radio to offer a $50,000 reward if anyone can find them. This sets in motion an evil scheme involving a locket, a murder plot and posed identities that, finally, must be righted with the help of the president of the United States. The finale is a huge Fourth of July celebration at the Warbucks estate.
          As in the stage show, the Warbucks mansion in the movie and its ostentatiously rich collection of art figure prominently in the movie. When the filmmakers decided to use the 130-room New Jersey mansion on the Monmouth College campus as Warbuck's domicile, they hauled in 3 1/2 45-foot truckloads of furnishings, largely from the Burbank studios. Included were Louis XV chairs of museum quality acquired by the studios in the 1930s and '40s as well as a small Aubusson rug worth $80,000 and torchers valued at $120,000. A few curiosities will also be on view in the movie, such as Jack Warner's personal ship's wheel which occupies Daddy Warbuck's library.
          Meanwhile, the building and furnishing of the "Easy Street" set took materials that would be enough for 20 tract houses. One of construction coordinator Gary Martin's problems was finding properly 1930s-looking fire escapes for the building along the street. Believing it would be easier and cheaper to buy off old buildings instead of fabricating them at the studio, Martin first explored San Francisco, but found fire escapes there had been made with rounded corners resembling those of New Orleans rather than New York.
          Roger Paradiso, "Annie's" New York location manager, eventually came to the rescue by finding a contractor about to level some old buildings in the Bronx and Manhattan. Fifty-three fire escapes promptly were purchased, taken down, cut up, put on trucks, shipped to the studio and reassembled. It's one of the small reasons this movie is expected to add up to $35 million to make, putting it in the same ballpark with big-budget features like "Superman."
          "Annie" is already being hyped as the big movie of summer 1982 even before it's out of the can, and Columbia is already trying to make up the $35 million quickly by seeking, according to the Hollywood Reporter, "unprecedented terms" with exhibitors to show the film, asking as much as a $1 million non-refundable guarantee for an exclusive engagement and 80 percent of the box office take after house expenses for the first twelve weeks of playing time.
          In short, Columbia feels it has a prepackaged hit on its hands. And the movie people figure when the sun comes out in June, they'll all be on Easy Street.