Bryan Abrams from The Credits, the online magazine of the Motion Picture Association, interviewed Lynn Wang, the director of the Netflix film Thelma the Unicorn. She discusses harnessing the magic of Brittany Howard’s voice and talks about the work of the Mikros Animation teams.
Read the full interview here.
What was the adaptation process from the books—did the books create parameters for how the film could look, or did you have the license to go in a different direction?
It was definitely an open conversation. Typically, when adapting a book for animation, you expect it to evolve. Things have to get more intricate to translate a 32-page picture book into a 90-minute movie, especially in CG. We always wanted to take the essence of what Aaron Blabey did in his illustrations, which were wacky, weird, and funny on sight, because we thought that fit the movie’s theme so well. Celebrating everyone’s quirks and ensuring you were celebrating yourself and what makes you special. So the core of those ideas were there, and there were some other things we wanted to keep: Thelma being short and the textures we loved in Aaron Blabey’s illustrations. Mikros, our animation company, was amazing. They had people who specialized in the physics of hair and cloth simulation and stuff like that, all that added together make this giant whole, and it takes a really long time. [Laughs].
