From DreamWorks Animation comes a new adaptation of a literary sensation, Peter Brown’s beloved, award-winning, #1 New York Times bestseller, The Wild Robot
The epic adventure follows the journey of a robot—ROZZUM unit 7134, “Roz” for short — that is shipwrecked on an uninhabited island and must learn to adapt to the harsh surroundings, gradually building relationships with the animals on the island and becoming the adoptive parent of an orphaned gosling.
We talked with writer-director Chris Sanders to learn more about how he made decisions about characters, the themes and the beautiful way it’s animated.
Interviewed for Family Entourage
Family Entourage: We’re so excited to chat with you today. I mean, usually I’ve been getting to do this for years, but it’s come full circle now that I can have my son involved.
Chris Sanders: Hey, good morning and welcome.
FE: Mr. Sanders. I’m so excited to see The Wild Robot. I read the book in third grade and couldn’t wait to see how you made it into a movie… how did you first hear about the book? Was it through your daughter?
CS: My daughter actually did read the book as well, and I saw it around, but I never opened it up. So a few years later I was at DreamWorks looking for my next gig, and amongst the things that they had in development was that book, when they described it to me, I immediately thought that’s what I’m interested in. So then I read it and then my daughter saw me reading it and she’s like, I read that, don’t you remember it? I was like, oh yeah, I do remember it. So now I’m reading it. And of course as soon as I finished reading it, I immediately called them back and said, okay, this is my next project. For sure.
FE: You took How to Train Your Dragon, this amazing book series, and turned into an awesome movie. So what excited you most about tackling The Wild Robot and making it into a movie?
CS: Well, first and foremost, the story and the characters. They remind me of How to Train Your Dragon in that it’s not a fairytale. It’s about characters that are very, very real in an unusual situation. And those are the kind of stories I really like to tell because I think that the emotional depth of those stories are the biggest you can find.
FE: I feel like it followed the book pretty close. But curious as to what went to the decision to make Roz talk?
CS: The biggest thing really was finding the right voice, and our very first choice was Lupita Nyong’o and she said yes, which we were very fortunate that she did. Since you’ve seen the book and you’ve seen parts of the movie, the biggest change in her design in the book, Peter Brown has a very simple line for Roz’s mouth, and I didn’t want our version of Roz to have any mouth at all because I think that I knew I should say that that would force our animators to work harder in pantomime to get her emotions across, and that’s a really powerful thing. Also, I feel that in the absence of all that articulation on her face, it allows our audience to really, really personalize and project their own emotions onto her as things progress in the story.
FE: Also, there were other added characters. I liked how the Falcon helped Brightbill fly. How did you decide where to add characters and where to keep true to the book?
CS: There were a few characters I trimmed back in the book. There are three bears and I trimmed it back to one. So that character, when that character does what it does, it’s a much more effective thing. And then the Falcon came out of, I wrote the screenplay, and it’s one of those things as you’re writing, you’re in the moment, and I just realized at that point that as much as Roz can do and as much as she can support Bright Bill, the one thing she can’t do is she can’t get off the ground. So I realized at that point he will need a flight instructor to help him once he’s up in the air and help him with the nuances of maneuvering.
FE: I have to say, as a parent, I really appreciated Roz because she’s doing everything that she can possible for Brightbill, but she’s not sure if she’s doing it right. She’s not sure what that looks like. And then ultimately, if she is doing it right, it means that he is going to end up leaving her. So maybe talk a little bit about how this mimics parenting and then share about the theme and how I really think that this is going to hit home for so many parents that are coming with their kids.
CS: Yeah, absolutely. There’s a lot of really wonderful real things. One of the things I loved about the story is that coming from Colorado, I have a lot of experience with Snowmen. So I think raising a Gosling is a little bit like building a snowman at the end of that road is going to be heartbreak if you do a really good job either way. And Roz doesn’t understand that that’s coming. And that’s one of the things I think is so beautiful about the story. And of course we have Roz who is, she’s a first time mom, so she’s overwhelmed. And then you’ve got Pinktail, and I love that character who is voiced by Catherine O’Hara, and she has three families per year, so the newness is well worn off. And so I love the counterpoint, and of course it’s an important moment when Roz runs into Pinktail’s whole thing is like, ah, you’ll figure it out. And so it’s really wonderful. I think people, it’s very real.
FE: One of the things that I think is so interesting too is Roz wants to complete a task. She wants to feel useful, as all of us do, but in nature that looks different and there needs to be some adaptation from what she was originally programmed to do. So maybe talk a little bit about that theme and then I felt like one of the things that hit home so much for me was just this idea of looking at things from a different perspective and how powerful that can be.
CS: You’re talking about two of the prominent themes in the story, and one of them of course is that sometimes you have to change your programming in order to succeed. And that’s a really important thing in the story, and it’s something I think that we can all relate to. We are creatures of habit. I really believe. I hate change as much as anyone else. Sometimes you just have to. And the beautiful thing about Roz is that we don’t realize it until later, but she’s beginning to go off script in order to accomplish this mission. Again, parenthood, you’re just going to have to make things up. You’re going to have to improvise. You’re going to have to do things outside of your comfort zone. And that’s again, something that we can all relate to. And the other one is kindness is a survival skill. And that was something that Peter Brown, the author told me in our very, very first conversation. I called him up and we had a zoom, and he told us that that was something that was on his mind as he was writing the book. I immediately wrote that down and thought that has to be something that we put on screen.
FE: It was cool to think that kindness is a survival skill. Talk about this value and also the importance of working together.
CS: That is another part of the story that I thought was so beautiful is that, and it happens. I scripted it, but in the story, it’s this unscripted thing that happens that these animals are pulling together because they’re so frightened of Roz when she first arrives, they would like nothing more than for her to leave. They want her off the island, but she stays of course, and she begins to change the culture of the island through her kindness. And by the end of the story, they gather around her and they’re protecting her. So everything has reversed. And in protecting her, they don’t even realize that they’re coming together as a community and as a family, this unusual family. And it’s all because of the kindness of Roz.
FE: Let’s talk for a minute too about the visuals, because I loved that it looks painted, that you feel like you’re entering into this other world, but then when there’s some action sequences and some other things that happen, those can still feel futuristic. So maybe talk a little bit about the visual landscape we’re seeing.
CS: This was the perfect story in the perfect place at the perfect time, DreamWorks Animation had made some great strides in getting away from that CG look that we’re all very used to and with The Bad Guys and Puss in Boots: The Last Wish. They had a more illustrated style, but we challenged ourselves and I asked Raymond Zibach, our production designer, how much further could we go? Could we really make this look like an impressionistic painting, if you will? And he said, let’s go for it. The reason for that is because the imagery in my head that I was seeing as I read the book was very sophisticated, and I didn’t want this to look young. I wanted this to look just like it does. I wanted it to look sophisticated so that we, because the themes in this as we’ve just been talking about, they are really sophisticated things and they broke the mold on this.
Anybody who sees this film is going to see something they have never seen before. Technically, usually always, we have had to build geometry, and we’ve wrapped that geometry with textures to make things look like rocks and trees and things like that. But in this case, these are actually painted, we could paint dimensionally in space. So at some point, as you’re watching this, glance away from the characters for just a moment and take a look at maybe the bushes or the ferns or the flowers, and you’ll see that they’re just little brush strokes and they don’t even complete themselves. They have breaks and things. And Fink the Fox, Pedro Pascal’s character, look at his whiskers. They’re not complete lines. They have little gaps in them because they are literal brush strokes, and the effect of that was more powerful than I could have ever suspected.
FE: How do you decide what each character would sound like and get such a great voice cast?
CS: They’re described in the book. Then I try to follow that when I write the script. So you’re building these models, and then we actually have temporary voices that will drop in as just, again, like a guide. When we ultimately cast the film, you then immediately begin to rewrite because you want to customize those characters for the voices. Lupita is probably the greatest example of this. It is a very complex thing, especially with Roz because we come into a recording studio and we don’t record anything first. We talk and we work on what is this character all about? How does this character sound? Each and every one of these actors customizes these characters even within these recording sessions. So it’s my job. Imagine me, I’m like a tailor, I’ll make a jacket. But then once we try it on the actual character, the actual actor, you’re going to have to tailor it and shape it to them. So it is one of the most, I think, wonderful parts of this whole process is this back and forth as we all collectively figure out exactly what this character is all about.
FE: I think one of the things that’s such a gift when you can sum a movie is when the director also writes it, they have that same talent to be able to do both. So for you, getting the privilege to be able to do both, when you were writing it, did you already see how you were going to have it played out on screen? Then when you are directing it, were there parts where you thought like, oh, maybe I should switch this? Or how does that work? Because you get the opportunity to kind of have it be both sides of your own work.
CS: I’ll tell you two really quick stories. When I was writing Lilo and Stitch, I started as a story artist, and I was given pages by a writer that I did not write, and I always thought, oh, I always had to change things because when you’re actually trying to make it work for the screen, you’re throwing things out and changing things. It’s just the reality of it. And I always thought, someday when I write a script, I won’t have to do this. It’s going to go onto the screen perfectly. And there came the day when I wrote that movie along with my co-director and co-writer Dean. I had my very own pages, and the first thing I thought was, well, this doesn’t work at all, and I have to change all this stuff. So I was like, oh, it’s not, it’s just the process. But there’s another thing.
There’s a great strength in it sometimes. Sometimes, there’s a scene, it’s one of my favorite scenes in the whole film where the island is shutting down for the winter and there is no dialogue, and on the page it’s just Roz walks to the top of the mountain and it’s very, very simple. And our story artists that illustrated that did a beautiful job, and I found out later that she thought, we’re just going to pull that out. It’s never going to make it to the screen because nothing is happening. But this entire time I was like, oh, no, no, no. A lot is happening. It’s just there’s nothing being spoken. So that’s one of those things that was in my head, and as we were making the movie, I would bit by bit, I explained it to everyone, so that was always a really, really important and huge moment. But on the page, it was very, very small. So as a writer, I was like, oh, no, no, there’s a huge thing going on because as a director, then I could get that part done visually.
FE: I feel like a lot of times where there was no dialogue and you’re seeing it all conveyed through even amazing music that you had placed in spots that pulled out so much emotion that I was like, wow, I’m getting a little bit emotional during this film.
CS: Yeah, so this is the first time I’ve worked with composer Kris Bower, and he’s very, very young. He just won an Oscar for directing at the last Oscars, but he’s an incredibly talented composer. His music is one of the reasons to go see this film. I always build what I would term houses for music within these stories because sometimes the biggest voice is going to be the music, and I let the characters go silent. And there are several places in this film. I think the most inspirational, sweeping, and memorable moments. None of the characters are talking. It’s the music that does the talking, and if there’s another reason to go see this film, it’s the music.
FE: Before you go, I guess only, I only have one question left. Can you turn other two books into movies?
CS: There are two more books and I’ve read them, and I think that that would be very likely.
The Wild Robot in theatres September 27
