Brad Bird is ready to try something that scares him.
The “Incredibles” and “Incredibles 2” director recently opened up about his next project and shared that it’s one he is “deathly afraid of.” During the during the BAFTA Tea Party red carpet on Sunday, Jan. 6, Bird told Variety that he’s working on his “next thing” and it’s a musical.
“I don’t know anything about musicals, so I figured I should do this,” he said. “I’m deathly afraid of it, and that sounds like a cool thing.”
It may be frightening for Bird, but he has a great composer lined up. Michael Giacchino will work with him again. The two have previously teamed up on both Incredibles films, “Tomorrowland,” and “Ratatouille.” Over the years, Giacchino has won an Academy Award, an Emmy, and multiple Grammys.
In addition to all the music, there will be 20 minutes of animation in the film, Bird says. He previously alluded to that fact during a Moviefone interview in October, saying his upcoming project “has animation in it, but it’s not an animated film.” At the time, he also mentioned his fear, calling the undertaking “another thing that scares [him].”
Well, you know what they say: No risk, no reward. Good for Bird for going for it.
Since we’re talking animation, we’ll have to wait until 2020 or 2022 for some of these.
Here’s what to look forward to:
“MOTOWN MAGIC” (Nov. 20, 2018) The series follows Ben, an 8-year-old who uses a magic paintbrush to bring the street art in Motown to life. This family-friendly series from Josh Wakely (“Beat Bugs”) brings together 52 newly recorded versions of classic Motown hits from such musicians as The Jackson 5, The Temptations, The Supremes, and Smokey Robinson, who serves as executive music producer.
“GO! GO! CORY CARSON” (2019), an animated preschool series based on the hit toy line Go! Go! Smart Wheels. It follows the adventures of kid car Cory Carson as he navigates the winding roads of childhood in Bumperton Hills.
“KID COSMIC” (2020), an animated series from Craig McCracken (“The Powerpuff Girls,” “Fosters Home for Imaginary Friends”). A young boy who dreams of becoming a hero gets his wish, but being a hero is far more complicated than he realized.
“TRASH TRUCK” (2020), an animated series from Max Keane (“Dear Basketball“) following the adventures of six-year-old Hank and his best friend, who happens to be a trash truck. Glen Keane (“The Little Mermaid,” “Aladdin,” “Beauty and the Beast”) is an executive producer.
Netflix
“THE WILLOUGHBYS” (2020). From writer/director Kris Pearn (“Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs 2”). When the four Willoughby children are abandoned by their selfish parents, they must learn how to adapt to the contemporary world. Based on the book by Newbery Award-winning author, Lois Lowry. Starring Ricky Gervais, Maya Rudolph, Will Forte, Martin Short, Alessia Cara and Jane Krakowski.
“MAYA AND THE THREE” (2021) is an animated limited series created, written, and directed by Jorge Gutierrez (“The Book of Life,” “El Tigre”). Set in a mythical Mesoamerican-inspired world, where a warrior princess embarks on a quest to recruit three legendary fighters to help save the world of men and gods. Silvia Olivas (“Elena of Avalor”) is co-writer and co-executive producer, and Jeff Ranjo (“Moana“) is head of story.
“MY FATHER’S DRAGON” (2021) is a 2D animated family feature film from director Nora Twomey written by Meg LeFauve (“Inside Out,” “The Good Dinosaur”). Based on the Newbery Honored children’s novels by Ruth Stiles Gannett, “My Father’s Dragon” tells the story of young runaway Elmer Elevator, who searches for a captive dragon on Wild Island and finds much more than he could ever have anticipated.
Other Netflix family animated titles that have been previously announced:
“KLAUS” (Holiday 2019), a 2D animated family feature film from writer/director Sergio Pablos, co-creator of “Despicable Me.” When a selfish young postman is assigned to a remote Scandinavian town, his unlikely friendship with a reclusive toymaker leads to the origin story of Santa Claus.
“MIGHTY LITTLE BHEEM” (2019), the first preschool series of the popular Bheem franchise. In production from director Rajiv Chilaka (“Chhota Bheem”).
“OVER THE MOON” (2020), a CG musical adventure about a girl who builds a rocket ship to travel to the moon to prove to her father that a legendary Moon Goddess really exists. Directed by Glen Keane (“The Little Mermaid”), written by Audrey Wells (“Under the Tuscan Sun,” “George of the Jungle”).
“PINOCCHIO”(2021), the animated feature film directorial debut of Oscar-winning filmmaker Guillermo del Toro.
“WENDELL & WILD” (2021), an animated feature film from writer/director Henry Selick (“Nightmare Before Christmas,” “Coraline”) and writer Jordan Peele. Two demon brothers (voiced by Keegan Michael Key and Jordan Peele) escape the Underworld and find themselves in a town where they must evade a demon-duster teenager, Kat, who is trying to destroy them.
“JACOB AND THE SEA BEAST” (2022), a CG animated feature film written and directed by Academy Award-winning filmmaker Chris Williams (“Moana,” “Big Hero 6,” “Bolt”). It’s the epic story of a charming seafarer who sails into uncharted waters and discovers an unlikely ally in a sea monster.
The stop-motion marvel, directed by the great Henry Selick, remains the crown jewel of Burton’s stop-motion output (and he didn’t even direct it), full of the kind of darkly humorous personality and rococo visual grandeur that we’ve come to expect from the director of “Batman,” “Beetlejuice,” and “Edward Scissorhands.” And while since it’s become a staple of not one but two holidays, it’s easy to take its masterfulness for granted.
But here are nine things you probably didn’t know about “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” which will probably make it even more special (again). The following is best enjoyed with either a cup of eggnog or a giant mound of Halloween candy. It’s up to you.
Touchstone
1. Tim Burton Originally Developed the Idea While Working As an Animator for Disney
It’s very hard to imagine Tim Burton toiling away at Walt Disney Animation, in the pre-comeback days of the early 1980s. But that’s exactly what he did, providing largely unused concept art and animation for forgettable fare like “The Fox and the Hound” and “The Black Cauldron.” (He also contributed, even more bafflingly, to “TRON.”)
Not that all of his work was middling. His time at Disney also allowed him to experiment — it’s where he made “Vincent,” a charming stop-motion short film narrated by Vincent Price, a Japanese-themed fairy tale that aired on the Disney Channel and a half-hour live-action short called “Frankenweenie.”
During his time at Disney, he also wrote a three-page poem called “The Nightmare Before Christmas” and worked with frequent collaborator Rick Heinrichs on concept art and storyboards. He also sought insight from fellow Disney animator Henry Selick, who would eventually direct the feature version. In 1982, Disney decided to develop the story into either a short film (like “Vincent”) or a holiday special (in a 1993 interview with the LA Times, Burton suggested that Vincent Price would provide narration). But in 1984, Burton was fired from Disney (admittedly, his singular style didn’t really fit in amongst all the cheery animated fables) and — for many years — the project was largely forgotten.
2. It Unexpectedly Rose from the Grave
The project had stayed on Burton’s mind, even after leaving Disney and becoming one of the most successful and sought-after filmmakers in the world. In 1990, he found out that Disney still owned the rights, so he contacted them. Co-producer Kathleen Gavin, in a documentary released around the same time as the movie, said: “When Tim Burton went back to Disney a couple of years ago and said, ‘You have a project of mine I’m still interested in doing,’ they dug out not only his treatment, but they dug out a lot of his artwork.” In the video, you can see a distinctly Tim Burton sketch of Jack, with the words “It was Zero, Jack’s ethereal friend, the best friend he had / But Jack didn’t even notice him, which made Zero very sad,” written in cursive behind Jack’s slumped figure.
Disney wanted Burton, but he was already committed to other projects; Burton wanted the creative freedom to do what he wanted.
The answer to both problems was the involvement of Selick, Burton’s old animator chum from Disney, who was brought on by Heinrichs (“I’m from the same planet, if not the same neighborhood, as Tim,” Selick says in the promotional making-of doc). Selick set up an animation studio (Skellington Productions) in San Francisco and stocked a 40,000-square-foot studio space with 120 specialized animators, artists and technicians. (According to Gavin, the team moved in July of 1991 and they had to be in production by October 1.)
“It was important to me to stay away from Los Angeles,” Selick told the Los Angeles Times in 1993. “I think that if Disney and even Tim had too much access to us, they would have gotten too nervous and gummed up the works.”
Touchstone
3. It Took a L-O-N-G Time to Make
According to Disney, they “assembled 13 of the most brilliant animators” for “The Nightmare Before Christmas” which, if you hadn’t noticed, isn’t that many animators. Disney’s official numbers are that, over a three-year period, they filled 19 soundstages with 230 sets, and “hundreds” of individual puppet characters (there are 60 characters in the movie but duplicates of most were needed). Supervising animator Eric Leighton explained in that same promotional doc that, “We’re shooting at 24 frames-per-second, which means that we have to pose the character 24 times for every second of completed film.”
The sets were constructed so that the animators wouldn’t have to reach more than two feet to adjust a puppet, and if they did have to reach further, special trap doors were built into the set. (Many of the scenes required 20-30 specialized lights to create the exaggerated, German expressionist look.)
And that’s not counting all of the work that went into the film before they even started animating, which included storyboarding the entire movie several times (Joe Ranft, a legendary Pixar contributor who died tragically in a car accident before the release of “Cars,” was the head of story.)
4. There Really Wasn’t a Script
“We didn’t really have a script, but there was a storyline that Tim had much earlier,” Danny Elfman said at the time. “We were running out of time, so I said, ‘I’ll just write some of the songs based on what we’d talked about.’ He’d come over and listen and then I’d say, ‘Let’s just talk about the next section of the movie.’ And as soon as he left, I’d write the next song. He had pictures of all these characters, so I had a really good visual stimulus to get going.”
So, yes, they had all of Burton’s original drawings, the poem, and some songs. And while the final screenplay is credited to Caroline Thompson, there was additional work by Michael McDowell, a horror novelist and “Beetlejuice” screenwriter, who helped initially move Burton’s poem into movie-form.
Since the script was finished after the songs, the animators initially worked on the musical numbers, starting with the first song, “This Is Halloween.” Selick has stated that they really didn’t know what they were doing initially, and that sequences that they animated earlier look cruder than ones they did at the end of production. This is definitely true of the “This Is Halloween” sequence, which is visually stunning but also a little rough around the edges.
Interestingly, ahead of the film’s release, Elfman cited that “Nightmare Before Christmas” was “the greatest collaboration I’d ever been involved with,” even though disagreements on the film led to a very public falling out with Burton. Elfman, who provides Jack with his singing voice, had also laid down vocal tracks for his speaking role, too. Selick and Burton found his dialogue delivery unsatisfactory and replaced him with “Fright Night” actor Chris Sarandon. (Elfman also does the speaking voice for Barrel, one of Oogie Boogie’s henchmen.)
But Elfman, who had grown quite attached to Jack, felt slighted, which led to him parting ways with Burton. “Ed Wood,” released by Disney the following year, would be the first Burton movie to not be scored by Elfman. They wouldn’t work together again until 1996.
Touchstone
5. At One Point, There Was More to Oogie Boogie
One of the movie’s best, grossest gags is the reveal of Oogie Boogie’s true self — a mass of wiggling worms.
This was one of the most difficult sequences in the entire film, consisting of four incredibly detailed shots that each took a full month to create and animate (see #3). But there was even more to this sequence originally. Early storyboards revealed “a surprisingly different storyline that ultimately wasn’t pursued” (according to Selick on the Blu-ray special features), one in which, when Oogie Boogie is split open, Dr. Finklestein is revealed inside. “Yes, Jack Skellington, it’s me!” Finklestein crows. “Me! The man who created Sally from bits of flesh and scraps of cloth! As Oogie Boogie, I wanted to teach her a lesson she’d never forget!” (Yeah, this doesn’t make a lot of sense.)
There was one additional surprise as a trap door on Boogie’s roulette table opens up to reveal the doctor’s hunch-backed assistant Igor. Even in rough form, it’s clear that the sequence didn’t really work and was wisely cut. Bye bye, Boogie.
6. Pixar Helped Out
If you have watched the credits for “The Nightmare Before Christmas” as much as I have, you’ll notice that a small team from Pixar is given a credit. It’s still, all these years later, unclear as to what exactly Pixar contributed to the film. (Selick and Pixar godhead John Lasseter went to Cal Arts together and Lasseter worked alongside Burton at Disney Animation.)
Most likely, it had to do with some post-production coloring, as Pixar had recently developed and introduced the CAPS system to Walt Disney Feature Animation, which replaced the traditional ink-and-paint model (a staple since Walt’s time) with a new digital coloring system. There were other minor CGI fixes/augmentation that the studio could have provided, since at the time they were a similar independent animation outfit located in the greater San Francisco area. Pixar and “The Nightmare Before Christmas” would continue to be connected for years to come (see #8).
7. It’s Technically Not a Disney Movie
During the lead-up to “The Nightmare Before Christmas’” release, then-head of Disney Michael Eisner got a look at early footage from the film and deemed it too dark and scary. (He also requested a moment when Tim Burton’s severed head is being passed around like a hockey puck be deleted from the movie; it was replaced by a Jack-o-lantern in the final film.) He would still allow for the “What’s This?” sequence to be included in Disney animated home videos from around that time (it was the full sequence, uninterrupted) but he also wanted some distance placed between the Disney brand and “The Nightmare Before Christmas.”
So, as it was, the Disney name was removed from the film and it was replaced with a card for the Touchstone Pictures shingle that would note that the film was slightly more adult and sophisticated. In an interview with IGN in 2006, Selick said that the company worried that it would “too dark and scary for kids.” He continued: “Their biggest fear, and why it was kind of a stepchild project, was they were afraid of their core audience hating the movie and not coming.”
And, to be honest, there was some merit to this apprehension. The film wasn’t a breakaway box office success, instead growing in stature over the years, to the point that it is now a yearly seasonal overlay to the Haunted Mansion and countless pieces of merchandise are sold each and every year. When the film was released, though, all of the toys (housed in nifty, coffin-shaped boxes) sat unsold at Disney Stores around the country.
Interestingly, if you watch the film today, either on Blu-ray or digitally, the iconic Disney castle greets you when the movie begins. It is no longer a stowed-away Touchstone Picture; it’s now, firmly, a Disney classic.
8. Without It, There Would Be No ‘Toy Story’
It’s hard to explain how, exactly, “Nightmare Before Christmas” paved the way for Pixar’s “Toy Story,” a film that would end up revolutionizing the entire film industry and serving as the bedrock for another Disney animation renaissance. But maybe John Lasseter can explain.
In a 2011 interview with Entertainment Weekly, he said: “Disney kept trying to hire me back after each of the short films I had made. I kept saying, ‘Let me make a film for you up here [at Pixar].” They always said, ‘No, a Disney animated film will always be made at Disney.’ They had no interest in doing an outside project.” Lasseter continued: “What changed their mind was Tim Burton. Tim and I went to college together, and he had developed a feature idea called ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas.’ He went on to become a successful live-action director and was trying to buy ‘Nightmare’ back from Disney. And they said, ‘Why don’t you just make it for us?’ That opened the door for Disney to think of these niche animated films that could be done. They said, ‘Okay, we’re willing to talk with you. We’ve got puppet animation going [with Tim Burton] and now we’ll be willing to develop the computer animation.’ They said to come back when we had an idea. So we started thinking…”
And, of course, their thinking led to “Toy Story,” another project that started as a holiday special before morphing into a bona fide feature film.
To make an interesting history even more interesting was the announcement in 2010 that Selick would set up a brand new stop-motion studio at Pixar. The new outfit, called Cinderbiter Productions, was already hard at work on a feature called “ShadeMaker” and, according to the press release, would serve as “a new stop motion company whose mandate is to make great, scary films for young ‘uns with a small, tight-knit crew who watch each other’s backs.”
Unfortunately, in 2012 the studio was shut down after Disney and Pixar management found the development of the current film to be unsatisfactory. After spending more than $50 million on the film itself, the company announced a write-down north of $100 million, given the amount of employees and real estate the new shingle occupied. Gone was Selick’s relationship with Lasseter, along with a potentially lucrative deal with Disney (after completing work on “ShadeMaker,” he was set to direct a live action/animated adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s deeply brilliant “The Graveyard Book”). Sigh.
Touchstone
9. Jack Had Cameos in Selick’s Subsequent Films
This is more of the Easter Egg-y variety, but Jack Skellington would appear in two of Selick’s other films.
In 1996, he would reteam with Disney and Burton for the considerably drabber “James and the Giant Peach” adaptation. While a largely joyless affair (those live action sequences are terrible), there is a bright spot when Jack and his insect pals visit a sunken pirate ship manned by a pirate-y Jack Skellington. (Richard Dreyfuss’ Mr. Centipede even refers to the character, in his broken New Yawk accent, as “Skellington.”)
Additionally, there’s a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it appearance by the Pumpkin King in Selick’s animated feature for Laika, “Coraline.” There’s a moment when Coraline is in the kitchen and the Other Mother is making her food; the Other Mother cracks open an egg and, in the yolk, is the face of Jack. It’s very subtle and tiny and hard to spot, most likely because they were navigating some very choppy legal waters with the insertion, but he’s still there, epitomizing the Halloween spirit in a very literal Easter egg.
Tonight, the last episodes of “Adventure Time” air on Cartoon Network, and — subsequently — one of the most audacious, influential (and, ultimately, successful) animated series in modern television will come to a close after nearly a decade. (The short on which the series was based was created back in 2007.)
It’s a testament to the all-ages appeal of the show, created by CalArts graduate Pen Ward (who, for the sake of transparency, it should be noted is a childhood friend), that its conclusion feels like some kind of joyous memorial — it’s sad, sure, but it’s also an opportunity for fans to openly discuss how much the show meant to them, what their favorite moments were, and how excited they are to pass that love on to an entirely new generation.
In short, “Adventure Time,” will be deeply missed.
And its omnipresence, peeking out of shops at the mall and rerunning, almost continuously, on cable and streaming services (it ran for a whopping 279 11-minute episodes), has desensitized us to how different “Adventure Time” was when it first aired in 2010 and what a profound impact it had on animation (and beyond).
If you’ve never seen “Adventure Time,” it’s the story of Finn (Jeremy Shada) and his dog pal, Jake (John DiMaggio), and their adventures in the mystical land of Ooo. They get into adventures and rescue princesses (and are oftentimes rescued by princesses) and form bonds with all sorts of magical characters and creatures. It’s a world that is both intricate and sprawling, a kind of fantastical, Miyazaki-influenced world that features almost improvisational dialogue that wouldn’t be out of place in one of Richard Linklater‘s films. It walks a precarious land between the fantastical and the commonplace, and it’s totally brilliant at straddling both tone and content.
As the show has gone on, the mythology of the land and characters has depended (whole books have been written about the minutia, apropos of something that obviously owes a considerable debt to the nerdy Dungeons & Dragons); characters back stories have been fleshed out, and whole worlds have been explained.
But none of this has any actually bearing on the show; you could pop an episode on (any one) and still be enamored with the gorgeously stylized characters and colorful artwork. The short running time of the shows allows for this information to be doled out economically; it’s only when looking at it as a whole that you can appreciate how staggering it all is.
It’s also been hugely influential. Look no further than animation breakthroughs like “Gravity Falls” (created by Alex Hirsch, a CalArts classmate), with its highly-serialized storytelling, or “Over the Garden Wall,” a beautiful benchmark miniseries created by “Adventure Time” creative principle Patrick McHale (Ward co-wrote one of the installments). The success of “Adventure Time” proved that children’s television could tell grand, finely mechanized stories and others took that knowledge and ran with it.
And it’s not just how these stories were told that proved instrumental in the medium, since the animation style has had a weighty effect on the way animation has looked in the near-decade that “Adventure Time” has been on the air. That kind of gentle surrealism, with obvious nods to Japanese animation, has become a staple in other animated shows.
Look at the equally brilliant “Steven Universe” (created by Rebecca Sugar, a former “Adventure Time” staffer) or “Star vs. the Forces of Evil” (created by Ward’s classmate, Daron Nefcy) and you’ll see all the hallmarks developed on “Adventure Time” — strong lines, characters with exaggerated features that belie quickly identifiable emotions, and worlds that place the otherworldly snugly beside the everyday.
Maybe what the show will most be remembered for, even though it hasn’t been given nearly enough attention, is in its advancement of LGBTQ themes and relationships in children’s programming. There is much gender fluidity in the series, particularly when it comes to adorable little computer/video game BMO (who has been referred to in both gendered pronouns) and because Finn and Jake have gender-swapped alter egos.
In one episode, gay ghosts appear. And in a more telling situation, principle characters Princess Bubblegum and Marceline the Vampire Queen, have shared an implied romantic relationship. This reached a head towards the end of last year, when Marceline sang a song about romantic yearning that was clearly aimed towards Princess Bubblegum (staunchly straight loudmouths on Twitter were not fans).
As Moviefone contributor Nick Romano wrote on EW.com, there is a wave of LGBTQ characters in children’s entertainment, with many of them coming from creators that worked with Ward in the past, and all of them coming after the strides “Adventure Time” had made. (This has led to “Adventure Time” being heavily censored in some foreign territories.) Many LGBTQ writers have noted how “camp” the “Adventure Time” sensibilities are, and since that kind of vibe has been endlessly replicated and absorbed in the past eight years, you can feel, ever-so-slightly, the entire landscape of children’s television animation getting a little bit gayer, one delicious piece of kitsch at a time.
And as much as all of this matters, we’ll miss “Adventure Time” for its charming characters, its witty wordplay, its candy-colored (sometimes literally) vistas, its sharp bursts of dark-and-scary, and the way it wound all of this stuff (bold stylization, political progressiveness, odd tonal shifts) into a single, cohesive package that was not only lovable but widely accepted. Ward and his cohorts showed the world something different (really different) and asked for a hug.
And, somewhat miraculously, the world hugged back.
The path to “Hotel Transylvania” was a long and winding one, full of dead ends, potholes, and false starts.
The project was first bought by Sony Pictures after an elaborate pitch was presented that outlined several films, as well as merchandise opportunities, theme park concepts, and television spin-offs. The project’s originator, comedian Todd Durham, would gain notoriety for inspiring the Lord Buckethead character, a comical riff on Darth Vader. Buckethead would go on to oppose leading British political candidates, beginning with Margaret Thatcher in 1987, John Major in 1992, and, most recently, Theresa May. (The character appeared in a 1984 no-budget “Star Wars” spoof called “Hyperspace,” directed by Durham. In England, it’s known as “Gremloids.” Lord Buckethead, in his political maneuverings, is part of the Gremloid Party.)
Following the sale of the concept, it went through five directors (Anthony Stacchi and David Feiss were replaced by Jill Culton, who was replaced by Chris Jenkins and then Todd Wilderman.) Finally, in 2011, Genndy Tartakovsky, best known for his traditionally animated cable series (the Los Angeles Times called him “The cartooning equivalent of a live-action TV auteur like ‘Mad Men’ creator Matt Weiner“), took over. By the time he’d signed on, the project had been in development for six years. Tartakovsky described the atmosphere, when he finally took over, as “bitter.”
Since the film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 8, 2012, it would wind up making $358 million worldwide. Its sequel would make $473 million worldwide. There’s an animated series currently airing on Disney Channel. And the third film, “Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation,” opens this week.
The new film’s creative strength (it’s the franchise’s best movie by far) and its commercial appeal (it made $1.3 million from an Amazon Prime sneak peek alone) cements Tartakovsky as one of Hollywood’s best, most unsung genius. After all, he did something that teams of the industry’s brightest couldn’t; he turned a pie-in-the-sky pitch packet into a half-a-billion-dollar franchise.
Sony Animation
If you know Tartakovsky, it’s probably from one of his television shows. Early in his career, he created “Dexter’s Laboratory,” a quirky comedy that ran from 1997 to 2003 on Cartoon Network. He was also deeply involved in early, influential seasons of “The Powerpuff Girls.”
But his magnum opus was “Samurai Jack,” also created for Cartoon Network, which ran from 2001 to 2004. It elegantly combined influences, from Hayao Miyazaki to Sergio Leone, and effortlessly weaved in surrealistic flourishes and Eastern storytelling into an ambitious narrative about a displaced samurai who is separated from his family and flung through the far reaches of space and time by a vengeful spirit. (More on this in a minute.)
It was “Samurai Jack” that got the attention of George Lucas, who tasked Tartakovsky with creating a micro-series of “Star Wars” shorts set in between the events of “Attack of the Clones” and “Revenge of the Sith.” (The first season consisted of 20 episodes that were only two or three minutes long; the follow-up season was comprised of five fifteen-minute episodes.) These episodes were brilliant. They were arguably the greatest thing to come out of the entire prequel period; each one crackles with energy and inventiveness. And for a while, at least, Lucas was grooming Tartakovsky to take over animation at Lucasfilm.
Lucasfilm
“Basically after the second ‘Clone Wars,’ Jim Morris — who was running ILM at the time — said, ‘George wants to make this a bigger studio and wants to bring you on as a John Lasseter-type.’ So I was like, ‘Yeah!’” Tartakovsky explained. “I said, ‘I want to do movies. I’ll supervise the TV shows.’ But I knew ‘Star Wars’ could be my life for the next 20 years and I didn’t want to do that.” His terms were simple: He’d oversee the TV shows and “do whatever for the studio and the company,” but he wanted to make an original feature.
Things got far. Tartakovsky said: “We worked out a contract, my wife started looking for houses, and I had one more lunch — like, the final lunch with George and Jim. We walked in and started talking and, all of a sudden, George goes: ‘I don’t want to do features. I just want to do TV. TV is the future.’ I said, ‘What?’ And Jim was just as surprised.” Quickly, he realized his life would be stuck in a galaxy far, far away.
He told Morris, “I can’t move my whole family just to do ‘Star Wars.’” Lucas thought that an original animated feature was too “risky.” The entire process left Tartakovsky “heartbroken.” (I got out of him that the feature would have involved Vikings, and he is quick to point out that this was before “How to Train Your Dragon.”)
Adding insult to injury was that, following his exit from Lucasfilm, Lucas effectively scrubbed the canon clean of his contributions on the “Clone Wars” micro-series. “I don’t think it was a personal vendetta,” Tartakovsky said. “It was basically that they were going to do ‘Clone Wars.’ They used all of our designs as the beginning of all that. They brought in a different crew. They wanted to own it. And this ‘Clone Wars’ was the definitive ‘Clone Wars.’ All that stuff that we did that was canon, that was part of the library and all of that stuff, got wiped out. They didn’t own it and they just tried to sweep it under the carpet.”
Currently, there isn’t even an HD version of the series that you can (legally) purchase. When I asked if the new Lucasfilm regime, led by Kathleen Kennedy, had reached out, he flatly said, “No.”
(Similarly, Genndy told me that his proposed “Dark Crystal” sequel, “The Power of the Dark Crystal,” originally announced by the Henson Company in 2006, stalled because of budget issues. The film would have been an “arty action puppet movie,” according to Tartakovsky.)
Still, the influence of “Clone Wars” endured. When Tartakovsky met with Kevin Feige in 2009, it was “to try and sell him on doing animated Marvel characters. Like what we did on ‘Clone Wars,’ do that for Marvel.” The conversation pivoted. “[Feige] started pitching me to direct ‘Thor,’” Tartakovsky recounts, still sounding amazed. As it turns out, that wasn’t quite what Feige wanted. But he did want to tell Tartakovsky how much of an impact he’d made on the birth of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (and, by extension, the next ten years of superhero cinema).
Marvel Studios
“We started talking about Jon [Favreau] and how, in the first ‘Iron Man,‘ he would look at ‘Samurai Jack’ and ‘Clone Wars’ as inspiration for the action. Feige asked if I wanted to meet with him, and I did,” Tartakovsky said. “So I met with Jon and, basically, he said my sensibilities are very much what he is trying to do with ‘Iron Man.’ And he didn’t know how it would work, but he asked if I would be interested in helping him with ‘Iron Man 2.’”
Tartakovsky’s help was instrumental in shaping the last third of the movie, particularly in the sequence where Iron Man and War Machine face off against various villains in a Japanese garden. Tartakovsky shot second unit and storyboarded the entire sequence, including shooting bits and cutting the entire thing together. The reason he cut it together is that so much of the power of his animated work comes from the rhythm of it.
“I said, ‘A lot of the stuff I do, it’s the timing and the pacing and the sensibilities, that really sells it.’ I showed him this whole thing. He liked it and I left,” Tartakovsky said. When he returned for a screening of the rough cut, he was in for a rude awakening; “everything was changed and it didn’t work as well.” Still, he was respectful: “I said, ‘Listen, you gotta do what you gotta do, but I don’t think it works as well.’ Then, when I saw the final cut, that one chunk was pretty much exactly how we did it, with the laser and the 360 and all the guys coming down. It was shot-for-shot.” Excelsior!
A year after “Iron Man 2,” he began work on “Hotel Transylvania,” a typically exaggerated comedic take on a hotel beloved by all your favorite movie monsters (led by Adam Sandler‘s Dracula). The rest is history. Sort of.
After the surprise success of the first film, he was swept into making the sequel. By all accounts, this was a difficult creative process, with Tartakovsky clashing loudly with the movie’s Sandler-appointed screenwriter (and frequent creative partner) Robert Smigel.
There were rumblings of difficulties between the two during the press tour for the film and those were amplified by emails uncovered during the Sony hack. It was a less-than-ideal experience. When the movie came out in 2015, Tartakovsky was adamant that he wouldn’t return for the third film.
The official story is that Tartakovsky went on a cruise with his family and he was so inspired by the comedic possibilities of the monsters on a cruise ship that he simply had to return. And while that certainly played a part, it’s far from the story.
“They were persistent at trying to get me back to do the third one. And I was very resistant. But the story idea helped to get there and also I said, ‘I think it’ll help if I get to write it,’” Tartakovsky explained. “Because there’s a thing about having the luck in my career where I was able to create a lot of stuff, I know how to tell a story differently. It’s from an animator’s point-of-view, so it’s more visually structured than a live-action type of scenario. And I think that’s one of the reasons my stuff has worked — I come at it from a different angle, a more visual angle. So when they agreed to have me write it with Michael McCullers, it was the sealing deal in being able to do the third one.” And it’s true; this installment feels more authentically Genndy.
When I pressed him to elaborate on the differences between himself and Smigel, he was typically democratic. “You have two creative people and I am very confident in what I do and very bullish, because it’s worked for me. Having this experience in animation, I want to do it this way. Of course, Robert and Adam are super successful and super funny and they want to do it that way. Who knows what’s right or wrong, but it makes things difficult,” he said.
Another factor that allowed him to sign onto “Hotel Transylvania 3:” the return of “Samurai Jack.”
Adult Swim
The property spent years languishing in a kind of in-between realm. He had paused the show to concentrate on “Clone Wars,” and simply never returned to it. (At one point, J.J. Abrams‘ Bad Robot had acquired the rights.) After years of silence, an announcement in 2015 (shortly after the release of “Hotel Transylvania 2”) was made that the show was indeed returning — and it finally made the air last year, airing ten episodes in the spring of 2017.
Watching the new series, which aired in the more mature Adult Swim nighttime programming block, you could feel Tartakovsky’s unbridled creativity splashing across every frame. It was, stylistically and, from a storytelling standpoint, one of the strongest series of last year and probably the second-greatest TV reboot to air in 2017 (“Twin Peaks: The Return,” we got you).
“Everywhere I went, to do press or lectures or any events, the first question is always: Is it a Samurai Jack movie? Are you going to finish the series? I was sitting in my bathroom and thought, I’m literally doing nothing right now. I was seeing what was going to happen. This was before the cruise [that would inspire the third film]. I figured I’d just put it out in the ether and I called up Cartoon Network and I got a response right away,” Tartakovsky explained, about his return to the series. “That was it. Within two weeks the deal was done and I started writing.”
Halfway through working on “Samurai Jack,” he started writing “Hotel Transylvania 3,” a movie that Tartakovsky says is “bigger and more fun” than the others. (This was, in part, due to the “refreshing” experience of making “Samurai Jack” again.) In particular, the filmmaker is proud of “Hotel Transylvania 3’s” finale, which features a giant Kraken having a dance-off with our heroic monsters (it’s really something).
“For a little while, it felt like too much. Like we’re going to scare kids,” Tartakovsky admitted. “But it felt like it was what I should be doing, really pushing the envelope. I try as much as I can. There are certain sensibilities that I can’t escape.”
Sony Pictures Animation
And now that he’s done with his ghoulish trilogy, what’s next for the filmmaker who has been subtly shifting Hollywood sensibilities without anyone ever noticing? After his “Popeye” project stalled and his original script “Can You Imagine?” petered out, he says he’s intent on trying new things.
First up is another TV show (“In today’s market, there’s so much original content being created, there’s no reason for somebody like me — who got their bones doing my own stuff — that I shouldn’t be doing my own show”), rumored to be called “Primal” after Cartoon Network filed some copyrights earlier this month. And then — finally! — an original animated movie for Sony. (In those same email hacks, it was revealed that Tartakovsky was the only filmmaker at Sony who the animators really responded to.)
“I could do these family films forever and I’ll pay my mortgage and it’s fine,” Tartakovsky said pragmatically. “But I want to push animation. I love it. My relationship with Sony is good. They want me to stay on. So, I’m writing a movie for them.” Later, he described the movie as “a big, original, action thing.” He also noted that Sony Animation “knows what they’re getting into.”
But will Tartakovsky ever make the jump to live action? He says he’s been offered projects, but refused to name specifics. He said that he’s intrigued and may one day write his own, but that animation is his “true love.” “I had this one live-action meeting and the guy said, ‘So you’re finally ready to graduate?’ And I was like, ‘No!’ Stuff like that bothers me to the core,” Tartakovsky said, bristling. “I’m very competitive and I’m very driven.”
The next DreamWorks Animation feature doesn’t hit theaters until March 1, 2019. That’s when “How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World,” the third film in the beloved franchise, is released; it’s also worth noting that it’s the first DWA movie since “Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie,” which came out way back in the summer of 2017.
But if you need your DreamWorks Animation fix, there’s a brand-new attraction opening at Universal Studios Hollywood this summer that plunges you into one of your favorite animated adventures.
As part of a continued effort to revitalize the theme park, which includes the popular (and very lucrative) Wizarding World of Harry Potter, the DreamWorks Theatre featuring “Kung Fu Panda: The Emperor’s Quest” is set to officially open next week. The past home to the Shrek 4-D attraction, this new state-of-the-art experience is something that is genuinely unlike anything you’ve ever seen before. And we got to experience it early, while taking a behind-the-scenes peek.
If you’ve visited the park and been to Shrek 4-D, you’ll notice some, at least superficial, similarities to that previous attraction (which opened in May 2003 and closed last summer). But virtually everything else has changed.
The show building will remind you of a classic Hollywood studio, and if you’ve ever visited or seen photos of the animation studio’s campus in Glendale, California, you’ll recognize that some things — including the Spanish-style architecture — have been borrowed, too.
After watching a pre-show in which various DreamWorks characters bicker and argue about who will get to star in this brand new experience, one character triumphs: Po from “Kung Fu Panda.” From there, you enter the theater for what John Corfino, the Creative Director at Universal Studios, described to us as “a transformative and immersive experience.” (He also stressed how different the 241-seat theater was from the previous attraction, explaining that the new theater has “a different geometry.”)
The actual ride film follows Po and some of his friends as they track down a mystical artifact that has been stolen. Corfino was cagey about what celebrity voice talent would be returning, although we can confirm no talent returned, so don’t expect to hear Jack Black during the attraction. As you watch the ride film unfold, the action expands, outwardly, until the entire theater is a part of the action. The attraction isn’t 3D, but the seats do have motion and you will feel the wind in your hair and get sprayed with water (of course); Corfino said that in many ways the seats furthest most back are the very best, since you can survey everything that is happening, all around you.
But what magic allows, say, Po to climb out of the screen and into another part of the theater? Two words: projection mapping.
Now, the basic technology behind projection mapping has been around for a while, and in recent years has become a favorite for theme park projects, where its been utilized for everything from nighttime spectaculars to more articulate faces for audio-animatronic figures. But this is the first time it’s been used like this in a theater setting. Corfino said that there was a lot of trial and error, with testing to figure out what shape the theater could be for the effect to work. 3D was considered for the attraction but they wanted people to look around the theater more organically. “Embrace the peripheral potential” is the phrase he used.
And while we didn’t see the finished product (it was still being tested); the experience of watching the ride film unfold (and we mean that literally) is incredibly thrilling. It’s one thing to just be seated in front of a screen, it’s another thing to watch the characters and action spill out into the physical environment around you. Quite frankly, it really does make you feel like you’re inside a DreamWorks Animation movie, with all of the zany humor, sight gags, and subtle nods that you’d expect.
When the attraction opens next week, visitors to Universal Hollywood are going to get a truly animated experience.
Of the “big five” Disney films (the first five animated features that Walt Disney oversaw and largely considered, by fans and historians, to be the pinnacle of the studio’s output), “Bambi” is the one that is, for some reason, often overlooked. Maybe it’s the simplicity of the story (it clocks in at a barely-feature-length 70 minutes), the fact that it didn’t have the same cultural impact as the other films due to its release during World War II (when much of the foreign market was cut off and the Disney studio itself had become a de facto army base), or because all anyone can talk about is how traumatizing the death of Bambi’s mother was (therapy helps), but for whatever reason, it often doesn’t get the attention and respect it deserves. Hopefully, the new Signature Edition of “Bambi,” timed to its 75th anniversary (out on Digital HD and Disney Movies Anywhere on May 23rd, and Blu-ray June 6th), will help restore its luster because really this movie was quietly groundbreaking and inspired countless Disney productions in the years to follow.
The idea for “Bambi” came to Walt while he was still plotting his first animated feature. Rights to Austrian author Felix Salten’s “Bambi: A Life in the Woods” had first been attempted as an ambitious live-action feature, before it even got on Disney’s radar. (M. Lincoln Schuster of the Simon & Schuster publishing house first brought the book to him.) But Walt, ever the visionary, knew that the technology and artistry at his disposal couldn’t properly bring the story to life. But by the time production on the film began in 1939 (on the same day Germany invaded Poland), Walt felt confidant that his animators and artisans could knock it out of the park. After all, the studio had just completed work on “Fantasia” and “Dumbo,” two of the most jaw-dropping animated features ever. They were at the top of their game.
It was so groundbreaking because the characters weren’t cute and cuddly cartoons. They had to register as actual animals. And their environments had to be suitably realistic as well. Walt took this very seriously and had animators study animals in the wild and also brought in animals to the studio, where they could be observed close-up. It would go on to inspire virtually every future film that featured naturalistic animal characters (most notably “The Lion King”) and the interactions with animals led Walt to create the nature documentary with his True-Life Adventures (something that carries on with the Disneynature films like “Born in China“). “Bambi” served as a benchmark in the medium; animated movies had felt alive but never like this. It was also a breakthrough for tone and structure. “Bambi” was a series of elliptical, philosophical endeavors loosely built around the changing of the seasons. As emotional as it was it was also deeply spiritual.This exclusive bonus clip (above), which features the animators and is narrated by Walt Disney himself (taken from a series of interviews conducted in 1956), underlines the technological and artistic accomplishments of the film. The footage, of animators hard at work on what become an immortal classic, is staggering by itself, but when paired with Walt’s narration, well, it’s really something. Walt can be heard saying that he had laid out a plan for what he wanted to accomplish with the medium (you’d be tempted to say “animation,” but it’s more accurate to say “film”). “We were self taught,” Walt said. “And the teachers were the students.” (This makes me think of a more recent example, Pixar, who was founded by computer wonks, animators, and technological wizards and would become a storytelling powerhouse for decades to come.)
Then Walt talked about how realistic and natural the film looked, which came about through canny management. “I picked certain artists who were not good at character animation and I put them into effects,” Walt said. “How we can make a raindrop look better. How we can make storm clouds effective and move. The effects men would experiment with anything.” Walt summed it up proudly: “I gave them things in my school that they never got in art school.” And it shows.
The “Bambi” Signature Edition will make you appreciate just what it took to bring this masterpiece to life. And could you please stop crying about Bambi’s mother? It’s been 75 years.
It’s no secret that Pixar bigwig John Lasseterloves cars, and it’s this love of cars that birthed the first “Cars” film (which he directed) and the sequel (which, after a period of development with another filmmaker, Lasseter ultimately took over and directed). So it’s really saying something that he was able to let go of his baby, handing the keys to “Cars 3” over to Brian Fee, a relatively unknown story artist within the much larger Pixar framework. Fee had been a part of the first two “Cars” films but this was something altogether different; he’d have to wrangle hundreds of artists and animators and take the franchise back to its roots after the sequel threatened to derail the series. That’s a lot for any filmmaker, much less a first-timer.
But if that sounds like a stressful proposition, you wouldn’t be able to tell by talking with Fee. I got to sit down with the director at the Sonoma Raceway, a beautiful track in northern California (and a perfect backdrop to talk about all things cars) and he told me about his history with the franchise, the third act to Lightning McQueen’s story, and how Ron Howard’s “Rush” inspired the look of the film.Moviefone: Can you talk about your history with this franchise?
Brian Fee: I started on “Cars” as a story assistant. And what that meant was that I helped the real story artists get their work done. Because we were all drawing on paper, so I helped them finish their drawings. They would draw the important stuff and I would do the background, which just had to be traced over from drawing to drawing. It was busy work, really. But it was to help them get their work done. The story supervisor at the time, the late Joe Ranft, I wanted to stay at the company and asked him, “How do I stay here?” And he said, “Make yourself indispensable.” It was the best advice I ever got. Because it was all about doing the very best you can and don’t show it to anybody until it’s the best it can be.
I gave myself a very high bar and that helped me become an actual story artist. So, one day I got the big boy pants and they let me be a story artist. I learned on the job, learned from everybody I could, and worked on “Cars 2” with John Lasseter. By that time I was considered more of a veteran story artist. It’s weird to be the young green kid and wake up one day and realize that I’m a veteran now. But I think a lot of people have that experience. So I worked with John on “Cars 2” and then worked with him in development of “Cars 3.” I was working on ideas and things and that’s when I was called into John’s office, unexpectedly. That’s when John told me, not asked, that I was directing “Cars 3.” Ed Catmull was there and he was the one who said, “We realize we’re not asking you. We know that.”
What was your reaction?
I was extremely honored they considered me for this; it was an honor they thought I was ready for this. And I was so excited because these characters were like family to me and I was excited to tell their story. At the same time I was terrified because I hadn’t directed anything before and I had a lot to learn in a very short amount of time.
What was the biggest surprise when making the movie?
I wouldn’t say there was a surprise, but the hardest thing was the story. I came from story but that is still the hardest thing. Everything else was less difficult because I can trust everyone. Everyone is an expert. I’m dealing with the best people in the business. So it’s my job to inspire them to do great work and once they do that work I judge it against one thing: Is this helping us tell our story and is it not helping us tell our story? And if it’s helping us tell our story, great! If it’s not helping us tell our story yet why is that? What can we do? And try again.
I know the studio is now mimicking real lenses in the computer when it comes to photography. What was your approach to the visuals and what lenses did you use?
Having never done anything in live-action, I didn’t know the first thing about lenses, so, luckily, my DP knew everything about lenses. So all I had to do was describe the look. So he could take care of all the technical stuff. We could just get in there and play with the look. And he [DP Jeremy Lasky] brings a lot to the table. A lot of the scenes are incredible because of his fantastic work. We talked early on about not wanting any of the races to feel overly conservative. And by that I mean any of the angles. It’s just like, let’s find the right times to push these angles on the characters to emphasize the grittiness of a real race. It’s a very extreme thing — the speeds and everything that happens down there. I wanted to take what was already done and push it a little bit more.
Were you referencing anything, either live-action or animation, when it came to the racing?
We looked at a lot of stuff. I really liked that movie “Rush” and how they shot that. So there was some really great racing things in there. But we had to be really careful because our cars are characters. So anytime you go below the nose, because you think low angles are really dramatic, but once it goes below the nose you lose the eyes. So there were some limitations and tradeoffs. It became: Is this shot about them being a car or a character? So it was always a balancing act.
You’ve talked about how this is the third act of Lightning McQueen’s story. How would you chart his adventure?
In “Cars,” he was the latest greatest; he was the new kid on the scene. He was the hotshot rookie. In “Cars 2,” he’s maintaining. In “Cars 2,” you can easily say you have a little bit of an older McQueen and he’s at the top of his game and at the top of his celebrity. So how do you have that character fall from grace? And age is the most obvious thing. We talked to Jeff Gordon and he said that, when he was young, he would go really hard but you would wear out your car. And the older he got, the more experience he got and he realized he didn’t have to wear out his car. And the young guys would pass him. He’d say, “He might have passed me but he’s wearing out his tires and using all of his gas. In 10 laps, I’ll pass him.” And 10 laps later, he’d pass them.
So the problem was, when those young people passed him and 10 laps later he didn’t pass them, that’s when he realized he’d lost some of the charge he had. That happens with every athlete. We started looking at — you can’t do everything forever. But if that’s all you know and that’s your self-worth, how do you deal with the fact that you’ll never be what you once were?
These movies obviously go through a thousand iterations. What was the story on the very first version of this movie?
Very first version? There were hints of a mentorship between Lightning and Doc. There was a Cruz character. It was a boy, not a girl. It took place in California, not the south. And Cruz was a farmer. Think Route 99. There was a scene where the sign got tipped upside down. That was the beginning. McQueen was going through more of a midlife crisis. There was a mistaken identity and McQueen didn’t look like himself. But that was bizarre territory and we quickly moved away from that.
Obviously, John Lasseter is going to have to retire at some point, just like McQueen. Did he contribute anything story-wise?
He contributed a lot, story-wise. For him, on a personal level, I think the mentorship sank in more. Later in the process, his son won a student Academy Award. And John felt the pride of watching his son receive the award. The pride matched or even surpassed his own experiences of receiving awards. That had a profound effect on him. And I’ve looked at John as a mentor from day one, even as a story assistant, I was watching how John did it. Because he’s a master at it.
The next DreamWorks Animation feature doesn’t hit theaters until March 1, 2019. That’s when “
This exclusive bonus clip (above), which features the animators and is narrated by Walt Disney himself (taken from a series of interviews conducted in 1956), underlines the technological and artistic accomplishments of the film. The footage, of animators hard at work on what become an immortal classic, is staggering by itself, but when paired with Walt’s narration, well, it’s really something. Walt can be heard saying that he had laid out a plan for what he wanted to accomplish with the medium (you’d be tempted to say “animation,” but it’s more accurate to say “film”). “We were self taught,” Walt said. “And the teachers were the students.” (This makes me think of a more recent example, Pixar, who was founded by computer wonks, animators, and technological wizards and would become a storytelling powerhouse for decades to come.)
It’s no secret that Pixar bigwig 
Moviefone: Can you talk about your history with this franchise?
