Richard Curtis introduced Christmas cheer to an unseasonably drizzly day on the Annecy Worldwide Animation Movie Pageant on Tuesday as he offered his first animated function That Christmas in a Work in Progress session.
“I actually adore Christmas. Every time I’m sort of pondering of tales, that’s the primary place that my thoughts goes to,” the screenwriter and director advised the viewers of animation professionals and college students.
Having made one of many definitive Christmas motion pictures of all time with stay motion hit Love Truly, the Bridget Jones Diary and Notting Hill rom-com king has his sights on realizing an identical achievement in animation.
His Netflix-backed animation debut is directed by How To Prepare Your Dragon animator Simon Otto (whose directing credit embrace Love, Demise & Robots) and produced by Nicole P. Hearon (Moana, Frozen) and Adam Tandy (The Thick of It, Detectorists) For Locksmith Animation.
“It’s the very best time of the yr,” mentioned Curtis of the Christmas season. “I like all of the questions. It says to you: ‘Have you ever been naughty? Have you ever been good? Is your loved ones practical?… There’s the disastrous household meal; the place I come from, there’s a giant, freezing Christmas swim within the North Sea, and there’s the dreadful stroll it’s important to go on with folks you don’t like.”
“Then there’s Christmas motion pictures, that had been at all times such an enormous factor after I was younger… It’s a Fantastic Life, I’ve seen it 40 instances. I like the Charlie Brown film. That’s my largest inspiration for this. There’s the opposite best ever Christmas film Elf. There’s White Christmas, which I used to look at with my dad each single yr.”
Curtis’ screenplay is tailored from his trilogy of Christmas-themed youngsters’s books – The Empty Stocking, Snow Day, and That Christmas.
“We’ve taking these three books and woven them collectively to inform one interconnected story and introduced Netflix on board with the thought of constructing a Richard Curtis film for the household,” mentioned Otto.
“After we first talked about turning these books into an animated function, the massive questions that popped up in my head had been how do you flip a movie about small occasions in these charming youngsters’s books into a giant, sweeping cinematic movie for the entire household?
“In animation, we have a tendency to inform tales with a single protagonist, huge journeys and fantastical concepts. For me personally, being a giant admirer of Richard’s movies, what makes a Richard Curtis film? I actually needed this movie to suit into his canon of flicks and stay as much as them.”
Set in opposition to the backdrop of an imaginary seaside city known as Wellington-on-Sea, the story unfolds within the run as much as Christmas Day, which is sort of derailed when a monster blizzard hits the area, hampering the return of the dad and mom from a social occasion within the subsequent city and leaving their youngsters to fend for themselves.
That Christmas, Locksmith Animation/Netflix
Courtesy of Locksmith Animation.
Within the backdrop, Father Christmas (voiced by Brian Cox) is doing the rounds.
“It’s a novel backdrop that may make our viewers really feel like they’re sitting in the course of the snow globe you are taking house from a winter vacation,” mentioned Otto.
The blueprint for Wellington is the seaside city in Suffolk, the place Curtis has a house, and a much bigger city subsequent door.
“I’ve had a really cowardly film profession” he mentioned. “I went to America after I was younger, and I set a film in Boston after which I realised I didn’t know something about it. So, I got here house. My first movie The Tall Man was initially known as Camden City Boy, as a result of I truly lived in Camden City. The following movie was Notting Hill, as a result of I lived in Notting Hill and I’ve simply achieved a movie known as Yesterday, which is ready in Suffolk and the Latitude Pageant, as a result of I stay in Suffolk and go to the Latitude Pageant.”
Otto defined that he and his staff began creating storyboards and drawing outlines from the books as Curtis was writing the screenplay.
“We began drawing after which because the pages got here in, we had been sort of refining,” he mentioned.
Curtis mentioned engaged on function animation had been “an intriguing course of” and worlds away from his experiences on stay motion productions.
“If you’re making actual life motion pictures, because it had been, it’s all simply print, and also you don’t see something till instantly you flip up on the day, and there’s the set. To see what I’ve written meant in actual phrases and in visible phrases, was so thrilling, as a result of then you possibly can write jokes into stuff you’re already seeing.”
Alongside A-list solid members Cox, Fiona Shaw, Jodie Whittacker and Invoice Nighy, the voice solid includes a host of kid actors.
Curtis mentioned working with them within the recording studio fairly than on a set had been a extra rewarding course of.
“One of the thrilling issues was to have actual time to work with youngsters not beneath strain. I feel the performances by the youngsters on this film are so type of wealthy, and humane,” he mentioned.
“My expertise of working with youngsters on film units is that it’s very scary for them. It’s laborious for them to relax… I’ve been fortunate. The boy in Love Truly was wonderful however there have been a few different movies I’ve achieved the place we’ve needed to reduce the youngsters in the long run.”
That’s Christmas launches on Netflix in December 2024.
