The Big Picture

Collider’s Steve Weintraub talks with
Spellbound
director Vicky Jenson.

Spellbound
features a stacked vocal cast, original music by Alan Menken, and highlights a heartfelt family story.
In this interview, Jenson reflects on the 20-year animation journey since
Shrek
, technological advancements, working with Martin Scorsese and Carol Burnett, narrative changes in Spellbound, the soundtrack, and much more.

Filmmaker Vicky Jenson is part of the two powerhouse teams that brought us the off-beat animated classics of a generation: Shrek and Shark Tale. On both projects, she served as a co-director, and 20 years later, her next animated feature — under her solo direction — is streaming on Netflix. As with the previous two, Spellbound boasts a star-studded vocal cast and plenty of musical numbers to keep the whole family singing through the holidays.

In fact, Jenson collaborated with the legendary Alan Menken on the movie’s soundscape and enlisted the epic skills of multi-talented stars like Rachel Zegler, Nathan Lane, John Lithgow, Tituss Burgess, Nicole Kidman, and Javier Bardem to bring this heartfelt story to life. In the movie, Ellian (Zegler) is a young princess whose parents, the king and queen (Bardem and Kidman), have transformed into monsters. Believing this to be the magic of a spell, Ellian sets out on an adventure to set things right.

In this interview with Collider’s Steve Weintraub, which you can read below, Jenson shares the long, seven-year journey from concept to screen, working through a pandemic and strikes, and even across the globe. She tells us how Menken and lyricist Glenn Slater were “instrumental in finding how to tell the story,” ​​​how The Princess Bride inspired the aesthetic of the film, and which scenes were most challenging to tackle. Jenson also reflects on working with Carol Burnett in Post Grad, how animation has changed since the days of Shrek, and her nerves before directing Martin Scorsese for Shark Tale.

How Much Has Changed in Animation Since ‘Shrek’?
“It just felt weird and small…”
Image via Dreamworks Pictures

COLLIDER: You co-directed Shrek . When did you realize, “Oh, wait, this might be a huge hit?”

VICKY JENSON: There was a screening we had before taking it out to the world, and afterward, we kind of looked at each other, went, “This is different. This is funny and really different.” It was before one of our big screenings, like before Cannes. But before that, we just thought, “We’re just making a movie in our garage.” It just felt weird and small, and everything was alien and different and new. I’d never worked in CG, and very few people had.

Can you rewatch that or Shark Tale , and do you see the flaws and the things you’d like to fix? The technology back then is so different than what you can do now.

JENSON: In some ways, the technology isn’t all that different. Yes, some are far better pipelines and stuff, and we are still rebuilding this one at Skydance — this is one that we sort of inherited — but the skill is all in the animators. It’s all in the lighters. It’s in the people. Things haven’t sped up for me working with everybody. There still isn’t a button that says, “make Charming” or something like that. [Laughs] Crowd scenes are still very hard to do. But there are things that are new, like the way we were able to do the feathers on the griffins. That was really different, and something that couldn’t have happened 20 years ago, and for them to move and interact. But there were still technical issues with feathers blending or colliding with one another. But still, for me, the way of making the movie, starting with writing, directing, actors, storyboarding everything, not on a little pads of paper, but on a Cintiq, the process is still the same.

A lot of directors in animation have told me that with directing, each movie is R&D for the next one.

JENSON: Yeah, yeah. Like I said, there are technical things that can keep evolving, but from a creative standpoint, a lot of it is very much the same. The technology doesn’t drive the decisions, necessarily, for me. Like, “Wouldn’t it be cool if we could do this?” It’s more like, “I wonder if we’ll be able to do that because I need this for the scene.”

No, you’re not alone. That’s what a lot of filmmakers have told me. It’s like you’re inventing to solve story challenges in the story you’re trying to tell.

JENSON: Yeah, exactly.

Martin Scorsese Was a Natural in ‘Shark Tale’
Image via DreamWorks Pictures

So you directed Post Grad , and you directed Carol Burnett. Was that the most nervous you’ve ever been, giving Carol Burnett direction?

JENSON: No, I was more nervous giving Martin Scorsese direction.

[Laughs] That’s valid.

JENSON: I couldn’t sleep the night before because I thought, “How can I direct a director?”

I don’t know what I would say to him.

JENSON: But it turned out to be really fun because, apparently, he was just as nervous. He was sort of like, “I don’t know what you want from me. This is not what I do…” “Do that. That’s what we want. You can do that.” Just his speedyness and hummingbirdness and insecurity, all of that fun stuff, was what we wanted from him. In the end, it was so much fun. But with Carol Burnett, oh, the stories! She would just tell these great stories on set. Fabulous. She was so much fun. She was the first one there in makeup every morning. That lady gets up early.

She’s also old-school, professional.

JENSON: Very professional, without making you feel like it’s a job. She just genuinely loves it. It was great. And Michael Keaton, too. Oh my god, what fun.

Yeah, they come from a different stock of people.

‘Spellbound’ Went Through a Major Narrative Shift During Production

Jumping into Spellbound , one of the things that I found interesting is how you start the movie with them being monsters. They’re not transforming into them. The story has already begun, and you’re catching up. Can you talk about that story decision?

JENSON: The story was always about these parents who are splitting up and the kid caught in the middle. So, it was sort of like, “Well, which part of it do you want to tell, the part where we’re already going back and forth between two houses and all the decisions have been made, or what does it feel like to be in the middle of it as it’s happening?” And then telling it from her perspective, from the kid’s perspective, which is in the dark about all of this, right? “Some crazy spell is making my parents act like monsters. It has to be. And it might be my fault because I hear them yell about it all the time, and I hear my name through a closed door.” A lot of kids feel like it’s up to them to fix it, like, “If I just do my homework or if I just help mom more, this will all stop.” So, taking it to that stage, that point in the family, it just was where the emotions are the most complicated, the richest, the hardest to navigate. That’s where the real story was.

One of the things about animated films is they can go through such revision over the years it takes to make the film. So what were, if any, some of the big changes that happened through this production?

JENSON: When I came onto the project, they were just humans, and they were a king and queen who were already at war with a kid going back and forth. It was a big epic sword-and-sorcery kind of movie with this underlying family situation. Both parents had magic, but some of that was sort of taking over. It was in the way. There was a villain who was very upset — Nazara was the villain — so it was peeling back the stuff that didn’t have as much to do with the core of the story, the heart of it, the heart of this family. We put these things on a shelf and then started to just look at, “Okay, this is the story of the family. How do we best tell it?” And when we hit on this idea, this allegory of a spell having made them monsters, it allowed us to really explore from the kid’s point of view, who is, like I said, in the dark, right? “Something must have happened to them because they’re not acting like themselves. They’re fighting all the time and all of that.” So, that was a big shift for new writers to work on this new idea.

Then, another shift that happened, maybe a couple of years later, about three-quarters of the way, halfway through our schedule, was the body shift on Bolinar, which was wonderful because it allowed for so much more humor and fun, and someone for Ellian to bounce off of who could speak. And then, his story sort of speaks to her story as he gets used to something new.

It’s so interesting because I would imagine right after you guys figured that out, you’re like, “How did we not figure this out sooner?”

JENSON: It just looks like it was always there. It takes time. It’s a lot of fun, though. I love the story-evolving process.

I’m fascinated by the editing process. What was it like after some of your early screenings or even further along screenings? What did you learn at those that perhaps impacted the finished film?

JENSON: Good question. I worked with such a wonderful editor, Susan Fitzer, and she’s so marvelous at working with music as well. I don’t know if we changed anything huge. We found people loved the oracles, so trying to find a way to bring them back. At one point, they were popping in and out of the forest a lot, and we didn’t really need all that. So, just running into them again in the forest and letting them put her on her journey, setting her on the yellow brick road, proved to be enough. You learn what people really are connecting to, and they all loved Ellian right from the beginning, which was really good to know, because she’s our lead, and we have to relate to her. You have to put yourself inside her.

‘The Princess Bride’ and Other Classics Inspired ‘Spellbound’
Image via 20th Century Studios

I felt a little bit like the oracles were a little nod to The Princess Bride . I could be completely off base, but the fact that there are two of them. Am I wrong about this?

JENSON: Tell me more. For you, how do they nod to Princess Bride?

It’s like there are two people in the forest, and you have Billy Crystal and Carol Kane. They’re in the forest, and they’re providing answers. There was a little bit like that. Now, mind you, this is not a strong reach; I’m just saying there was a little bit of that for me.

JENSON: Well, we all love Princess Bride , and so tonally, there were some aspects for sure that we shared because it’s just an aesthetic that a lot of us share. The story has an earnest gentleness to it, so it shares that, too. But I also love The Court Jester with Danny Kay, and so quite literally, there’s a nod to that when the banners that are hanging down come to life and take the soldiers, swing them out of the way. It’s kind of like the circus performers at the end of The Court Jester when they help get rid of the soldiers. And the music is very much like a classic in that spot, too. Sort of a nod to the old way of telling stories. But nothing so literal, though.

Working With Alan Menken Was “Instrumental in Telling the Story”
Image via Skydance Animation

I really enjoyed the music in this, and I think that it adds so much. There are a lot of songs, so can you talk about getting Alan Menken and Glenn Slater to do the music and then be working with them on the music?

JENSON: We’re just so lucky. Chris Montan, who’s a good friend of John Lasseter, when he brought Chris in to talk with me, like, “So what do you want to do with the music? What are you thinking?” It’s a musical, and he suggested looking at Alan. I didn’t even think that was possible. It seemed out of reach. Working with Alan and with Glenn, our lyricist, so early — we brought them in very early, even before that big story switch I was talking about — it was instrumental in us finding how to tell the story, finding the right voice for it.

Telling a story with songs is different than just telling a story. The songs have to act like scenes. They have to do the same work a scene would do, which is to move the story forward. Whether it’s taking the characters through an emotion to another one, or moving from a point of despair to a point of decision, anything. It needs to carry the story and do storytelling, not just stop and sing one feeling. That was huge to learn that from them and how to place those through the movie based on big emotional turns in the movie.

I know you’re not going to answer this, but I’ll try. Do you have a personal favorite song of the ones they did?

JENSON: You know that I love them all. I think I feel very connected to “The Way It Was Before,” her “I Want” song. “Remembering” is very beautiful to me, and I like the simplicity of how we stage that with a rotating camera around these characters, one on either side of Ellian and these monsters grasping at the vestiges of memory. They can feel it, but they can’t put their fingers on it, and I think that’s very moving. And then, of course, her anthem at the end, her angst and her loneliness and her anger. She gets to sing these justifiable feelings. You don’t see that in animation — some villain gets to sing about that kind of stuff, but you never get to see the lead vent, and justifiably. She gets to feel that.

6:56 Related Nathan Lane and Tituss Burgess Came to ‘Spellbound’ for the Chance To Work With Legends The pair also shared what they aimed for in the recording booth.

I don’t think a lot of people realize how much time it takes to make a movie like this. Can you talk about how long you’ve been working on this? Animated movies take a long time.

JENSON: They do. When they’re in production, they all are about the same — 18 months to two years of physical production from the beginning of layout through the last shot in lighting and that sort of thing. But it’s the story development that could take a long time. There could be stops and starts. I’ve been on projects where sometimes the storytelling took longer. All the pre-production is always the longest part, but this has been the longest I’ve been technically on a movie. I’ve been on it seven years. I started at the end of 2017. And somehow, we made it through working with a different country, nine hours time difference, and then through a worldwide pandemic where we couldn’t even be in the same room together. Eventually, I was able to go to Madrid and work there much more directly. We went through a couple of strikes, but we kept moving! We kept moving. Everybody was so connected to the story emotionally. Everybody who worked on it, from the cast to prop designers, everybody really felt this movie deserved a lot. So, I think it came through.

There’s always a shot or a sequence in every movie that you spend way more time on than you expected. Was there that shot or sequence in this film that either in the editing room you kept going back to or in the animation? Was there one that was just extra difficult?

JENSON: Wow, a moment that would be hard to crack… I know we definitely worked on that ending scene of the third act. There was a whole other take on it that we had at one point of how the parents remember what happened between them and then tell Ellian, and what they say to Ellian. I think we worked the hardest on that. It wasn’t anything technical. Sea of Sand was a pain, sure. Trying to create sand that moved like water, and with a tornado and clouds and all of that madness. But I think story-wise, how to handle that was the most challenging and really took the most time.

Spellbound is available to stream on Netflix now.

Spellbound, directed by Vicky Jenson, follows Princess Ellian on her adventurous quest to rescue her family and kingdom. As a mysterious spell transforms her parents into monsters, Ellian must navigate this perilous journey to restore the King and Queen of Lumbria.Director Vicky Jenson Cast Rachel Zegler , Miguel Bernardeau , Giovanna Bush , Dennis Stowe , Jenifer Lewis , Dee Bradley Baker , Susan Fitzer , Nicole Kidman , Javier Bardem , John Lithgow , Olga Merediz , Rich Moore , Nathan Lane , Tituss Burgess , John Ratzenberger , Vicky Jenson , Angela Grovey , Jessica Molaskey , Isabelle McCalla Runtime 109 Minutes Writers Vicky Jenson , Lauren Hynek , Elizabeth Martin Studio(s) Skydance Animation Expand

Watch on Netflix