Based on the award-winning and New York Times bestselling book by Peter Brown, the animated adaptation will release from Dreamworks Animation on Sept. 27. Directed by Chris Sanders and starring Lupita Nyong’o, Pedro Pascal, Catherine O’Hara, Bill Nighy, Kit Connor and Stephanie Hsu, with Mark Hamill, Matt Berry and Ving Rhames, the film is visually spectacular centering on themes of kindness, compassion and self-sacrifice.
Sanders, responsible for the modern animated classics “Lilo and Stitch,” “How to Train Your Dragon” and “The Croods,” recently spoke to Reel Faith’s DeWayne Hamby and his daughter, Natalie Hamby, about the making of the film, what drew him to the project, and what audiences can glean from the story of ROZZUM unit 7134, also known as “Roz.”
DeWayne Hamby: We love the movie. It’s a modern classic. I mean, I just think it was pitch perfect. So congratulations. I can’t wait for everybody to see it and see the reaction to it.
Natalie Hamby: What made you want to do this project?
Chris Sanders: The story and the characters. Peter Brown’s book is popular for a reason. He has these amazing themes and characters. And it’s the kind of thing that I really like. I’ve worked on fairy tales, and I love them. But as far as making a movie, this is more the kind of thing that I really, that I really connect with,
DeWayne Hamby: I love that it’s an original story. Did that appeal to you as well?
Chris Sanders: Yeah, there’s a different kind of challenge with this kind of thing. This is an adaptation, and so as a screenwriter and a director, I have to make changes from the book. The translation from the from the page to the screen, it takes time, and you trim some things back, and you might add some things, but it’s all in service of getting that core story up onto the screen intact.
Natalie Hamby: What do you hope people will take away from this film?
Chris Sanders: I think the themes of kindness and the idea that you may have to change your programming at some point in your journey. I think that’s very, very real. Certainly, I’ve experienced it. We are creatures of habit. I don’t like change, but when I look back at moments in my life where I had to deal with change, those were moments of growth, and that’s certainly at the core of the story with Roz. She arrives on this island with prepackaged programming, and she at the moment of truth, where she realizes that this little gosling is now her responsibility. The first thing she says is, “Nope, I can’t do it. I don’t have the programming.” And she literally tries to walk away, but she can’t. So, in dealing with that, she reveals later on in the story that she had to go off script, and she had to start improvising. And for a Ro Seven for a ROZZUM unit 7134 robot, that’s a kind of a no no. That’s one of the reasons that Universal Dynamics, the company that made her, becomes very concerned and very interested in getting her back, because they want to understand what happened. It’s a really neat idea,
DeWayne Hamby: Chris, just out of curiosity, now that you mentioned it, did you have any pushback from Universal? They’re the parent company behind the movie, right?
Chris Sanders: Yeah, I they liked it. You have to invent things like I had to invent the name of this company, and one of the things that they have to clear it legally. So, I tried a few, and they would come back and go, “Actually, that one’s not available, and that one’s not available.” And then one day, I thought, “Universal,” I’ll try that. And I thought, “There’s no way. I’m sure that this one’s already been taken.” And they bounced back and said that one’s available. And then I thought “Will universal like that?” And they did. They thought it was cool.
Natalie Hamby: This is like “Bambi” in that it doesn’t shy away from death. Why do you think that’s important?
Chris Sanders: It’s at the core of the story. We needed the audience to understand that on this island there’s consequences. That’s like working on “The Lion King,” it’s a life and death place. That kind of consequence gives you a lot of emotional resonance and depth, and we had to have that if the story was going to truly resonate and work.
DeWayne Hamby: Chris, Were there moments when you’re putting it together where you think, “Okay, I know everybody’s going to cry right here”?
Chris Sanders: I think we’re talking about depth. You want to you want to get full depth on these moments. You don’t want them to almost work. You want them to really work. It. So first and foremost, when I’m writing these moments, there’s a moment where Br9ght Bill has to leave the island, and I’ll just put music on, and I’ll run that sequence in my head over and over and over again. And you know, when riding a bike or driving to work or doing anything, I’m still working on that sequence in my head and modifying it until I feel like I got every little bit of it that I could get. So it takes time, and there are moments of inspiration where it gets you and you’re like, “Oh, I felt something when I was thinking it up and when I was storyboarding it,” and then, and then it only gets better, because we have this team of artists that is going to enhance it through animation, through color. And then Chris Bowers’ music is incredible and one of the reasons to see this on a big screen is to hear that music at scale. It’s absolutely incredible.
DeWayne Hamby: The animation is just stunning, in my opinion. It makes full use of high definition, 4k, whatever. It’s so great. Are you involved at all in the live action “Stitch” movie that’s coming out?
Chris Sanders: I’m doing the voice. I have always done his voice. At the end of the process, there came a day when they played a voice for me after the film was done. And I wondered, “Why are you playing this for me?” And they said,
“Well, this is going to be the person who does Stitch from now on.” And I said, “I want to do stitch from now on.” So every ice show, every parade, every commercial, I still come into a studio and I do his voice.
DeWayne Hamby: What’s the difference between directing animated and live action?
Chris Sanders: I think a simple way to think about it is on a live action set, all those disciplines are in one place at one time. You do a shot, and you’ve got a cinematographer, someone who’s doing light, someone who’s doing sound, and in an animated film, imagine all those separated, so the acting is separate. We do the voice, and then we do the animation. Meanwhile, we have a lighting department that’s working on the lighting. We have a background department that’s painting the backgrounds so they’re all just separated, and then we bring them together through the process.
DeWayne Hamby: Well, congratulations on the film. I think it’s going to be a huge hit. I’ve seen the reviews. They’re just glowing so well deserved. So thank you. Thanks for talking to us today.
Chris Sanders: Thank you.
“The Wild Robot,” directed by Chris Sanders, will release in theaters on Sept. 27 from DreamWorks Animation and Universal Pictures. Watch the video interview with Chris Sanders and DeWayne and Natalie Hamby below.
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