![]() “In a weird way, you’re sad because you want to see the movie on the big screen with an audience,” Appelhans said. The Machines,” the latest Oscar hopeful from “Into the Spider-Verse” producers Phil Lord and Chris Miller, and first-time director Michael Rianda. Sony was set to distribute “Wish Dragon,” but, with theaters closed, Netflix came to the rescue, and acquired the animated feature along with “The Mitchells vs. We designed every moment and story beat to be streamlined.” “Wish Dragon” NetflixĪ final, unexpected twist occurred after the pandemic hit last year. He’s just a total 2D character that’s sculpted in 3D to create these poses. “It’s totally broken and disconnected behind camera. “So we had a stunt hand that comes out behind his head,” Appelhans said. His hands and head needed to be in close proximity, but it didn’t make sense to limit his hand gestures. Long was difficult to rig and required very specific rules for posing. It was a chance to celebrate what you can do in animation that you couldn’t do with humans.” “Then he wanted him to be the one character that wasn’t grounded at all. “We also wanted to completely subvert expectations so we made him pink and covered in fur,” the director added. The goal was to pay tribute to the iconic look of a Chinese dragon with a horse-like muzzle and reindeer-like horns. Not surprisingly, the design and animation of Long, the genie, took the greatest amount of artistic effort. But they showed how it deserved to be executed at a proper level.” “We had an animatic we liked, great character designs, and about 50 percent figured out. Mid-way through production, though, Sony stepped up with additional financing and management acumen from Kristine Belson (president of SPA) and Pam Marsden (head of production) to complete the movie with studio polish. “On one level, the movie was an independent production, but Sony partnered at the most critical juncture,” Appelhans said. The voice cast also included a trio from “Fresh Off the Boat”: Constance Wu, Jimmy O. Meanwhile, producers Aron Warner (“Shrek”) and Chris Bremble (VFX supervisor at Base FX) helped set up the pipeline, and head of story Radford Sechrist (“How to Train Your Dragon 2”) and production designer Shelly Wan (color artist on “Inside Out”) provided crucial artistic leadership on the $25 million production. ![]() Olivier Staphylas (“How to Train Your Dragon”), who served as head of character animation, brought a stable of young animators he trained in China and India. It was set up by a Chinese consortium that included Jackie Chan’s Sparkle Roll Media and Flagship Entertainment Group, and marked the debut animated feature by Base Animation, a division of visual effects studio, Base FX, based in Xiamen. He had Long all worked out.”īut it was important that “Wish Dragon” be made in China to retain any semblance of authenticity. I prepared all these notes for John, but he didn’t need them. “He’s patronizing and a bit arrogant and, in a weird way, has a very delusional view of the world. “He’s your best friend for his own very selfish reasons,” Appelhans continued. ![]() That’s where the genie steps in: a wise-cracking, cynical con-artist with a dark past and an addiction to shrimp chips. “And that was the inspiration for the story: When the world is changing so fast, how do you keep your bearings? How do you figure out what matters to you when anything’s possible?” “Wish Dragon” Sony Pictures Animation “We’d go back three months later to do more research and they’d be gone, completely replaced by a mall,” he added. During research trips, Appelhans observed half-demolished neighborhoods being gentrified. Part of the challenge was making a love letter to the transformation that started in Shanghai 10 years ago. In a naive way, I tried to recreate that experience through this story and hope people get a better understanding of China.”Īnimated Series ‘Mulligan’ Finds the Comedy in a Post-Apocalyptic America The result is “Wish Dragon” (streaming Friday on Netflix), an American-Chinese co-production with Sony Pictures Animation, in which working-class college student, Din (Jimmy Wong), teams up with pink, fluffy, snarky genie, Long (John Cho), to reunite with his long-lost childhood friend, Lina (Natasha Liu Bordizzo), now a famous model.Īs Appelhans watched a friend in Shanghai “struggling with family and class and concepts of success, it seemed like that timeless story… about a peasant boy who lives with his mother, meets a wish-granting genie, falls in love with a princess, loses himself, and finds himself again, could have newfound relevance today,” he said. When visual development artist Chris Appelhans (“Coraline”) realized that “Aladdin” was originally a Chinese folk tale while visiting Shanghai 20 years ago, he had an aha moment about writing and directing an animated genie-in-a-bottle retelling set in modern Shanghai.
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