“Spellbound” is ready to cast its spell.
The upcoming Skydance Animation feature debuts on Netflix on November 22, as the first deal between the streaming giant and the John Lasseter-led animation studio, and you can watch the trailer right now (below). It’s a new fairy tale, with a teenage princess (Rachel Zegler) dealing with the fact that her parents (Javier Bardem and Nicole Kidman) have been transformed into unruly monsters. And, really, how many teenagers feel like their parents are monsters?
Perhaps most excitingly, “Spellbound” marks the return of director Vicky Jenson, who directed “Shrek” for DreamWorks Animation. In an exclusive interview with TheWrap, Jenson said that “Spellbound” borrowed from traditional fairy tale elements with in a very deliberate way. But, of course, there’s a twist.
“What we were trying to do was create a new fairy tale for a modern story. We were trying to create a brand-new allegory for something that is very relatable to a lot of families,” Jenson said. “Starting with those kinds of familiar elements of a castle, and a princess, and a king, and a queen, and a spell, and magical characters, a journey, all of those things helped us to reframe a fairy tale around this more modern story.” (What these modern elements are, of course, will remain to be seen.)
The story of “Spellbound” started with those that know a thing or two about familiar fairy tale elements – the original story was conceived by Linda Woolverton, who worked on Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast” and “The Lion King,” and the music for “Spellbound” was composed by Alan Menken, an actual Disney legend responsible for countless classics. Glenn Slater, Menken’s lyricist on “Tangled” and the stage version of Disney’s “The Little Mermaid,” is also along for the ride.
Jenson said that Woolverton was responsible for creating “the world itself and the shape some of the characters,” but the story was “quite big,” with warring factions and parents from different kingdoms. “It was very, very ambitious,” Jenson said. She credits John Lasseter, the former Disney and Pixar exec, who joined Skydance Animation while “Spellbound” was still in development, for getting it on track. Lasseter, she said, “helped really get down to what is the key story here. And then we’ll bring in those fantastic elements, as they really fit the core [story]. It’s been a really amazing journey. And one where the story always knew what it was trying to say.”
Still, the heart of “Spellbound” really stuck around. When she was first pitched the project she thought, That’s brave. I love it. I’ve got to be involved in this. (She said that she was technically the first Skydance Animation employee; she was also the first employee at DreamWorks Animation.)
But those expecting something like “Shrek” should probably adjust their expectations. “Spellbound” is tons of fun and very funny and magical, but it’s also a more earnest storybook tale. “This movie has a different heart to it. It’s a different color, a different tone,” Jenson said. “Shrek,” she said, was “all about breaking fairy tale expectations,” since Shrek’s story was that of someone who looked like the villain but is really the knight. “That was baked in. That kind of irreverence and poking fun at all these fairy tales. That was the point of that story, because it was key to its to its heart,” Jenson said. “This has a different heart. This is about the steps a family goes through to reconnect and move forward and a forge a new happy ending. That requires a different tone to it. It’s not the same.”
The movie is a fairly tale ending for Jenson, too, as it afforded her the “opportunity to direct by myself for the first time in animation. That was also key for me.” Jenson said the “old thinking” was that animated features needed more than one director “because there’s so much to do.” She said that on “Shrek,” they “divided up the movie into sequences that each of us took a creative lead on.” Sometimes they’d swap sequences. “But here, I really felt in my element, being able to try to be the sole conductor of a major symphony of this movie,” Jenson said. How magical is that?
“Spellbound” premieres on Netflix on Nov. 22.
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