![]() First put into development when Pearl, now owned by China Media Capital (CMC), was operating as a joint venture with DreamWorks Animation, the film - about a young Chinese girl who, while grieving for her mother, builds a rocket to the moon to prove the existence of a legendary moon goddess - fits Pearl’s mission of telling stories rooted in Chinese culture but aimed at a global audience. Over The Moon is a co-production with China’s Pearl Studio but stands as Netflix’s first ‘self-managed’ animated feature - and probably as the company’s most expensive animated project to date (neither Netflix nor its filmmakers will reveal specific budgets). Knowing that going in, it was an interesting puzzle to figure out how to get it all to fit, how to get as much as possible on screen.” Full blast “But there’s a freedom in that,” he insists, “and it leads into creative choices. Making the film for Netflix and Bron meant working to a budget that Pearn confirms was closer to the norm for independent animation than to the levels associated with Hollywood studio projects. I would say, ‘Can we make it look like the old days?’ and a bunch of smart people would go off, rub their chins and figure out how to trick the computer into doing it.” “I am not a CG animator, necessarily,” Pearn concedes. Kris Pearn, who started out as the project’s writer but ended up making his solo directing debut, says the CG film’s stylised, almost stop-motion look helped bring out the quirky tale’s “Roald Dahl quality” and made it possible to tell “a story about a dysfunctional family in a way that gave people permission to laugh, to know this wasn’t a documentary - that it was a parable, a fairy tale”.Ĭanadian Pearn has done his time working on Hollywood studio animations (he co-directed Sony’s Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs 2) but credits his stint as a storyboard artist with UK stop-motion experts Aardman Animations as an important influence on The Willoughbys, which uses techniques such as variable frame exposure and heightened textures to achieve its visual style. A world-weary cat, voiced by Ricky Gervais, narrates the action. The Willoughbys is Netflix’s second in-house original - after 2019 holiday release and Oscar nominee Klaus - though it is what the streamer calls a ‘partner-managed’ project, the production partner in this case being Canada’s Bron Animation.īased on Lois Lowry’s 2008 children’s novel and developed at Bron for a year before Netflixboarded, the film centres on the four, very different Willoughby children, who hatch a plan to send their selfish parents on vacation but end up on their own adventure revealing the true meaning of family. “There isn’t one type of family enjoying our movies, and our job is to create a unique collection of best-in-class stories for them to choose from.” ![]() The animated features Netflix currently has in awards season contention - originals Over The Moon and The Willoughbys, as well as acquisitions Bombay Rose, A Whisker Away and A Shaun The Sheep Movie: Farmageddon - illustrate the “variety and originality” the company is targeting, Taylor suggests. That, in turn, has allowed Netflix to complete its first three feature projects and swiftly assemble what Taylor describes as a “pretty hefty” development slate. When the company began its push into the genre just over three years ago, says vice president of feature animation Gregg Taylor, “My biggest concern was whether or not we could find enough quality stories to become a true destination for family content in a short amount of time.”īut Taylor and his colleagues discovered “a pool of fantastic filmmakers eagerly waiting for a more non-traditional place to bring their stories”. Netflix has become a force in feature animation sooner than some in the industry - maybe even a few of the streaming giant’s own executives - expected.
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