Hoppers Director & Producer Talk Sequel Chances, Getting Meryl Streep | Interview
Hoppers director Daniel Chong and producer Nicole Paradis Grindle spoke with ComingSoon about Pixar’s latest movie. The duo discussed their desire for a sequel, how one of the film’s most distinctive features was almost cut, and more. Hoppers is now streaming on Disney+.
“The wildly imaginative animated adventure follows animal lover Mabel as she uses a groundbreaking technology to ‘hop’ her consciousness into a lifelike robotic beaver, uncovering a hidden animal world shaped by its own rules. Alongside charismatic beaver King George and an unforgettable community of local wildlife, Mabel embarks on an action-packed mission that invites audiences to experience nature like never before,” says the official synopsis.
Tyler Treese: Daniel, I wanted to ask about the beginning of the film. Mabel’s not non-verbal in the intro, but she only says a few lines. Can you speak to that characterization? Because I couldn’t think of another Pixar protagonist that was quite like that, and it sets a unique tone for the film, and such a contrast to the spitfire that she becomes.
Daniel Chong: I guess it just felt intuitively correct. Especially since she’s going to become such a vocal character later. Maybe the instinct to not have her talk so much was also because we’re clearly setting her up to be an outsider, somebody who doesn’t connect with people and is kind of alone in the fight. She’s not one of the kids that will join everybody and bully this turtle. She’s doing the opposite. So I think there’s a part of her that is just very different.
I think maybe we were instinctually trying to create some contrast. Also, when she’s with her grandmother, a lot is pent up in her. There’s a lot of emotion being kept inside, and she doesn’t know what to do with it. I do think it’s only when she meets her grandma that she finds some release and connection. So for those reasons, it felt right that she doesn’t have much to say and is much more internal and bundled up, I think.
Tyler Treese: Nicole, your past Pixar work has been a lot on sequels, like Incredibles 2. What are the challenges that come with launching an original idea like Hoppers and getting an audience to really invest in that?
Nicole Paradis Grindle: It’s a challenge. You create a whole new world with a whole new group of characters and figure out what it is that you’re making. You don’t know where it’s all going to end up as you’re planning in terms of a budget and schedule.
But we had a really strong premise to begin with, a strong main character, and a strong general theme that we were working with. I think it was really about following Daniel’s lead in terms of his instincts. He’s very funny, and he knows and makes decisions very quickly as a director. I think that gave me a lot of confidence that if we followed his lead, we’d be able to find our way through what ended up being an enormous movie.
We also had time. Time was a friend of ours in that we had time to figure out what was important for the storytelling, and it allowed us to build this really big world with all these characters.
It wasn’t just a bunch of characters. It was characters that had completely different character rigs. You have a bear, deer, beavers, birds, frogs. They all had different skeletons to animate, and we needed time for the animators to figure that out.
I would say it’s really hard and scary, and ultimately incredibly gratifying, to create a new world.
Tyler Treese: Dan, one of my favorite elements of Hoppers is the difference between the animal world and how we view them. They’re much more expressive when we get to see their view. What were the challenges of pulling off that idea and getting these multiple versions of these characters? It’s very fun to see the differences.
Daniel Chong: As you say, the multiple versions of the animals or characters, that is the problem. You’re basically asking the team to create double assets, and it’s a big ask. Every model is accounted for because they all take a long time to make. Every different body type, as Nicole said, is an extreme amount of work.
Now we’re asking, “For every animal, can you do two versions?” It’s not as simple as popping a black eye on them because the facial construction is done in such a way that it requires work to integrate that black-eye version.
Nicole Paradis Grindle: Just to say, when you first asked for it, they went, “Nope.”
Chong: Yeah. It was a hard no initially.
Grindle: “No, we can’t do that.”
Chong: I think we found the trick eventually of how to easily embed the black eye, the dot eye. The modelers and technical teams had to figure out how to aesthetically do it in a way that wasn’t too much work, but it was a big ask.
I think we all held hands and said, “We understand why it’s important to do this. We understand the joke and the reason why emotionally it’ll matter.” It was about working with the team and figuring out how to do it. Obviously, Nicole was central to that because the question became, “How do we afford it?”
Grindle: Exactly.
Nicole, I wanted to ask you about Jon Hamm. He’s so good at playing smug, but he’s also inherently likable. How was it using that for Mayor Jerry? You don’t want people to really hate that character. I feel like we’re always rooting for him to change his ways. How was it making that antagonist still likable and having that layer?
Nicole Paradis Grindle: Jon Hamm was always the guy. He was who we hoped to get, and luckily, we got him. He could be kind of smarmy, but in a way that is funny and likable, and Jon just nailed that.
Mayor Jerry was an interesting journey. It took a while before we got to the place where we really redeemed him at the end. Initially, he was just kind of a bad guy. It became clear that for the story we were telling, we needed him to be humanized and to understand what was motivating him and why he did what he did.
It ultimately makes the story so strong. Jon Hamm is the one who can pull that off. He can go from smarmy to, at the end, bringing tears to your eye. Like, the guy is saying, “Okay, I’ve made some mistakes. Let’s work together.” I think it’s what makes this story strong.
Daniel, you had left Pixar before, and Hoppers was essentially the culmination of your return. You really bet on yourself, and it paid off. How cathartic was it to have Hoppers release and be embraced by audiences and critics after all these years of work?
Daniel Chong: It’s a relief, thank God. I’ll be honest, the more I think about this game we play of working six years on a movie and then hoping that it hits is such a crazy gamble. I don’t know how the studio has done it 30 times. But that’s just the way it is.
The best thing you can do is work with the studio and do the best you can to put out the best thing you can. A lot of it’s luck. You hope it hits at the right time, that people want it at that time, and that it resonates. But it’s a big relief. I can’t describe the anticipation and tension you feel as the movie is nearing release. It’s nerve-wracking. Thankfully, it worked out.
Grindle: I wanted to add that we have hundreds of people who work on our team, a lot of young people, and a lot of people who are relatively new to the studio. Their feedback is key to us. They’re the ones who can say, “This feels fresh. This is funny.” At a time when it’s easy to fall into the tropes of old Pixar, they were the ones saying, “No, you really have to change this.”
Or being behind Daniel when he was doing some crazy stuff, like having a shark carried by seagulls, and having some people in the studio go, “I don’t know, that’s too crazy,” while others said, “Yes, we have to do that.”
I love that everybody’s voice is valued. Nicole, as far as Pixar pacing goes, this is a very laugh-a-minute and a faster-paced film than some of the older films. But there are also so many deeper themes at play with the environment and how we cohabitate with animals. How was it balancing that humor while also having those overall themes that really register and make the film stay with fans long after the credits roll?
Grindle: Humor was the first thing we were putting forward. We wanted to make a film that was entertaining, but we also wanted something beneath all of that to have meaning.
We weren’t telling anybody how to think about these things. What we were recognizing is that there’s stuff going on in the world right now about the way people interact with one another and about the environment. That’s what good storytelling is. It’s plugging into the zeitgeist. It’s plugging into what people are feeling in the world without necessarily taking a side.
It’s plugging into something that has a deep emotional undercurrent. I think that was the thing we were always balancing. We weren’t trying to tell anybody how to think about these things. We were just recognizing this is the world we all live in and seeing what rose to the top.
Having a whole studio of people telling us what they think and giving us notes, people who come from all different places, really helped.
Daniel, I have to ask, how did you get Meryl Streep for this role? It’s so hilarious and shocking what happens to her. What was your pitch like?
Chong: The funny thing is that I would use Meryl as a reference, not thinking we’d get her, but trying to help people understand how powerful the character is. It’s like Meryl Streep, but never thinking we’d actually be able to cast her.
When it came time to cast, we thought, “Maybe we just ask and see what happens.” We got very fortunate and actually got to do a Zoom call with her to show her the project and see if she’d want to do it.
Within a couple minutes of us starting to pitch the movie to her, you could tell she liked it. She was laughing a lot and understood the tone. I thought the deal breaker was going to be telling her, “Meryl, I just have to tell you, you’re not going to survive past your first scene.” I was willing to let that be the deal breaker because she’s not in it very long.
But she got the joke. She understood that what’s funny is not just that the insect queen gets squished. Meryl Streep gets squished. It makes you feel something because you think she’s going to be in the movie longer.
It played toward everything I had hoped for with that role. Meryl was down for the joke, and she’s playful. When we got in the booth with her, she was so fun and easygoing. She experimented, and that really weird voice she puts on was all her. I didn’t have to ask for it. It takes comedy chops to be consistent with a voice like that and make it funny. She’s got it. She’s good at what she’s doing.
There’s the quote: “Meryl Streep, she’s good.” Very astute observation there [laughs].
Nicole, I really cracked up that the city was called Beaverton because one of my best friends lives in Beaverton, Oregon.
Nicole Paradis Grindle: Oh, good.
They really embraced the film, and I know you guys did some celebrations there upon release. How cool was it having that real city embrace it as well?
Grindle: I have to say my son was living there while we were making the film, too. It was really cool and obvious. We never intended for this to take place in Beaverton, Oregon. It just had to be Beaverton because beavers live there. It was incredibly cool seeing Beaverton, Oregon, embrace it.
Also, a bunch of universities that have beavers as their mascots did stuff. People from Canada are really digging this movie because of beavers. The whole state of Oregon is also into beavers. It’s been really cool. Beavers are having their moment, and Beaverton is just a part of that.
Daniel, my last question. I know you can’t give anything away, but have you been ideating on any ideas for a sequel? Are there any seeds that you would like to explore, if possible?
Daniel Chong: I just got back from vacation. I’ve been off since the movie came out, so I’m just coming back now.
All I can say is there’s a lot of desire for it to happen from everybody, and we’ll see what happens. Pixar is notorious for not making anything if there’s no story there. They will scrutinize the hell out of it.
We’ll just see what happens and go from there. We definitely cut a lot of stuff out of the movie because this movie was never short of ideas. There’s definitely a lot of material we could pull from for a sequel if we had one.
Thanks to Daniel Chong and Nicole Paradis Grindle for taking the time to talk about Hoppers.
Source: Comingsoon.net