This interview was originally published on ComicBookMovie.com.
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.
The Wild Robot is written and directed by three-time Oscar nominee Chris Sanders - the writer-director of DreamWorks Animation's How to Train Your Dragon and Disney's Lilo & Stitch - and is produced by Jeff Hermann (Kung Fu Panda).
We recently had the good fortune to sit down for a conversation with Peter about his books finally being brought to life on screen in the hit movie which is now available on Digital.
Talking about his collaboration with DreamWorks Animation and the filmmakers, the author reflects on the crazy experience of sitting down with his heroes to watch The Wild Robot for the first time, his involvement in the creative process, and what it was like seeing Roz on screen.
The writer also weighs in on the movie's voice cast and the scene that really blew him away when he got to watch it for the first time.
You can check out the full interview with Peter about The Wild Robot below.
Adaptations can go one way or the other, but this is a marvellous film. What did mean to have creatives like Chris Sanders and Jeff Hermann spearheading this take on your books?
Well, I was honoured frankly. I’ve been a big fan of Chris Sanders for a long time. In the beginning, I didn’t know who the director was going to be. DreamWorks option the film rights before a director was attached so I didn’t know who was going to end up being the person. When they hired Chris and he signed on, I thought, ‘Okay, I’m in good hands.’ I was pretty excited and I knew he would do something special and that’s what he and Jeff did. And the whole team. They made a really special movie.
It must have helped too knowing Chris has come up with characters like Toothless and Stitch. Roz was definitely in safe hands.
Yeah, absolutely.
When the creative process did start, how involved were you?
I was never in the studio working on it with the team but I had a lot of conversations with Chris and Jeff over Zoom throughout the whole process. I think probably one of the first things they did was have a call with me to pick my brain and ask me about the book, the characters, and the research that I did. There’s a lot of actual science that went into writing the novel so they wanted to understand a bit more about that. We had some really productive conversations over the course of the whole filmmaking process and, as I’m sure you know, animated films take a really long time to make. Those conversations added up as a couple of years went by throughout the filmmaking process.
Over that course, the conversations changed a little bit, of course. In the beginning, it was a lot about understanding me, my thoughts, and my story. Gradually, it was more them showing me what they were coming up with. By the end, it was them showing me various versions of the film in various states of completion until finally the whole thing was done. It was a fascinating process for me to watch. As a lover of animation - I actually worked a little bit in animation but not in features - so it was pretty awesome to watch the process from the beginning to the end alongside Chris Sanders who is just a legend in this business. It was a privilege.
The film boasts an amazing cast - Lupita, Pedro, Mark - it’s a who’s who of A-List talent. To hear them bring your characters to life, what did that mean to you and how happy were you to see that cast come together?
[Laughs] It was really exciting. Some of my all-time favourites, Mark Hamill, Catherine O’Hara, Matt Berry…he’s one of my favourite comic actors. I couldn’t believe he was on this. Of course, Kit Connor did such a great job with Brightbill. They all did a fantastic job and just being fans of theirs, it made me even more excited. Pedro Pascal seems like the hardest-working guy in show business right now. He’s just everywhere all the time doing everything. The fact that he was part of it was really exciting. I was thrilled. Again, in the beginning, I didn’t know what any of this was going to turn into so every step of the way, it felt like DreamWorks was making really smart decisions, hiring Chris Sanders first and foremost and then Jeff. And the various creative leads and the voice cast. It just kept getting better and better.
I can only imagine the years you put into telling these stories on the page and then the years waiting for this film to come to fruition. The day you sat down and finally got to watch that finished cut, was there anything in particular that blew you away?
Well, I’ll say that it’s been such a busy few months leading up to the release of the film that the first time I actually watched the finished film was at the world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. I was sitting alongside Chris and Jeff and Lupita and…Pedro wasn’t there but Catherine and Mark were. It was just surreal, to say the least. To be in that company, sitting down in a movie theater, surrounded by some of my heroes. To actually try and focus on the movie was a bit of a struggle because I was just so excited about the whole situation, but there was one scene in particular that really struck me which is the scene where Roz first discovers Brightbill. There’s this accident, she tumbles down this hillside and discovers that there’s this family of geese that’s been killed and only one survivor. She picks up this egg, gives it a scan, and realises it’s alive and well. It’s just such a touching moment. It’s a night-time scene, it’s drizzling, it’s quiet. Even though I love Kris Bowers' music throughout that scene because it’s incredible, I think that scene might not have been any music playing in that moment. It’s just quiet and powerful as this robot realises what she has done and realising she’s holding a life in her hands and trying to grapple with what that all means. It was a really important scene in the book and to see it brought to life so beautifully in the film was one of my favourite moments.
There are so many great characters in the film, but Roz is the heart of the story just as she was in the books. When you saw her brought to life on screen and the design of the animated version, what did you enjoy most about that?
It was great. The movie Roz looked a little different from the book Roz, but Chris explained to me stuff that I kind of already knew, but it was the fact they needed to make her animateable. My design from the illustrations…it was a still image. I don’t have to worry about how the character actually has to move on the screen, so they needed to change her a little bit and I think the finished design they came up with was pretty cool. They stuck to the general shape. A robot can look like anything actually so the fact she’s got a rounded body, two glowing eyes, and long bendy limbs is reminiscent of my character so that made me pretty happy to see. She wasn’t a complete departure and the design didn’t drift so completely far away from my original design. That was satisfying, of course, but also the team at DreamWorks is just incredible. The designs they came up with for the characters were really interesting and beautiful. The artistry, and the backgrounds look like impressionistic paintings. It’s a pretty stunning film visually speaking and in every way. The visuals in particular I felt quite struck by just how gorgeous almost every single frame of the film is. It’s a beautiful work of art and I feel lucky that my book played a part in inspiring such a beautiful work of art.
The Wild Robot is now available to watch at home digitally from Universal Pictures Home Entertainment.