Some people may be surprised to learn that your professional background in animation includes quite a long stint at Disney, even working as a producer on THE GUMMI BEARS and CHIP N’ DALE RESCUE RANGERS. It must have been quite a jump from Mickey Mouse to HELLBOY.
Don’t forget DARKWING DUCK, DISNEY’S HERCULES, ALADDIN, BUZZ LIGHTYEAR OF STAR COMMAND and random DVDs and features. I even pitched HELLBOY as a prime time series when I was at Disney. But I didn’t move from the Mouse House to HELLBOY. I had a couple of years of transition writing a variety of projects. I produced an animated DVD for NBC Universal and even wrote a Scooby Doo adventure, Scooby Doo and the Anime Invasion, sadly it remains unproduced. I even developed a robot project with Stan Winston which was a lot of fun. Nothing like having story conferences in meeting room filled with dinosaurs and Terminator robots.
How did you first become involved in HELLBOY?
After Disney I needed an agent. Aaron Berger represents animation talent as well as small domestic studios and larger studios overseas. He asked what I wanted to do with my career. Now I understood that he wanted me to state some sort of general goal, or a description of the types of projects I wanted to work on. But I just sighed and said, “I want to do HELLBOY.” Not only did he know who HELLBOY was, his company was handling the licensing of Guillermo’s HELLBOY movie. He had me at the free t-shirt.
But I was already working my own angles. I had worked with Mike Mignola on a DVD sequel to Disney’s ATLANTIS, and had written two HELLBOY half hour scripts as samples of my writing. I treated Mike like a network, pitching him premises and getting notes on the outlines and scripts. That was immensely valuable in that it was I chance to learn to write HELLBOY without the pressures of production. By the end of that process Mike was pretty sure he wanted me to head up any potential animated HELLBOY project.
Guillermo knew me through Mike but also from the HELLBOY movie message boards. Beyond that I practically stalked him at every DVD signing he did near me. I was one of the group of fans that he invited to a dinner with Mike Mignola, Ron Perlman and him and an early press screening. Man, that was pretty sweet.
Anyway, by the time all the interested parties got together my name was at the top of a list of one. That’s never happened to me before. It helped that my agent’s company brokered the deal between Revolution Studios and Film Roman Studios where the animation is done. I don’t think I’ve ever chased a project like I did HELLBOY.
SWORD OF STORMS was a great follow-on to both the live-action HELLBOY movie and to Mike Mignola’s ongoing comic book work, but BLOOD & IRON is even better, and really captures the spirit of Mike’s original comics, perhaps more accurately than any other adaptation to date. How involved was Mike in the project?
BLOOD AND IRON had the advantage of a very slight learning curve. The two movies overlapped production so the artists were already warmed up when it came to how to tell a HELLBOY story. Plus they appreciated the darker tone. Mike and I wrote the stories of all the movies. Mike then gave notes at every stage of writing, attended the major recording sessions, chose the design style of the animated HELLBOY and notes on the designs of any character based on characters he created. And monsters. It would be silly to design monsters without getting Mignola input.
In general, Mike had as much creative control as he wanted. He made a conscious decision to only give notes on certain things or he would need to move into the office next to me and we’d NEVER see any HELLBOY comics.
Guillermo Del Toro is also credited as a consulting producer on SWORD OF STORMS and BLOOD & IRON, along with Mike. How much creative input did Guillermo have in the two projects?
I’ve said many times that without Guillermo there’d be no animated HELLBOY. In the long road to get HELLBOY onto the movie screen he and Mike briefly considered doing it in animation to remove the budget worries. I’m sure that idea lasted an afternoon or maybe the length of a phone call, but it got him thinking. Some of his earliest posts on the HELLBOY movie website were about the potential HELLBOY animated series.
But by the time we moved into production, Guillermo was hard at work on his masterpiece, PAN’S LABRYNITH. I was just watching some of the extras on the DVD. Very inspirational. I wish the crew could have seen them before we started HELLBOY. As it was, Guillermo got all the scripts and animatics and gave notes on some of the recordings which improved the performances in BLOOD AND IRON. But he had to cancel of visit to our studio; it’s hard to worry much about a cartoon on the other side of the world.
Uniquely, unlike most other animated spin-offs of movies and/or comics, HELLBOY: Animated manages to be very much an essential part of the whole HELLBOY universe, rather than just a cash-in. Is this something you consciously set out to achieve when conceiving the HELLBOY: ANIMATED features?
Mike is careful to keep his HELLBOY universe his own. He doesn’t try to tie into the movies although the movies can influence the timing of his stories. Mike has a hundred potential HELLBOY stories bouncing around in his brain. He’ll think about one, developing characters or a piece of action, but if he hits a roadblock he might just set it aside, popping it back into the oven for more baking as it were. But if he puts his mind to it, he can solve about anything. In the comics, the apocalyptic dragons, the Ogdru Jahad, had only been shown trapped in crystals, floating in space. Once Guillermo broke them out at the climax of the movie and brought them into the light, Mike decided he had to publish his version, which he did in The Island which tells the origin of HELLBOY’s stone-like hand. When Mike and I started talking about including his pulp hero, Lobster Johnson, into the animated universe, he decided he better get to work on the Lobster Johnson stories that he’d been toying with for years. If he didn’t then the animated Lobster Johnson, or perhaps a version that Guillermo comes up with, becomes the definitive character. So we’re getting some Lobster Johnson comics soon! Can’t wait.
So the animated universe isn’t essential to the world of HELLBOY, because the “real” HELLBOY is under the control of Mike Mignola. But if you mean, we didn’t chase after the most toyetic storyline or bland HELLBOY out to make him just another superhero, well that’s just a matter of respect for Mike.
Do you think it would be fair to say that one of the key components in making the HELLBOY: ANIMATED features work so well is the vocal presence of all the lead actors from Guillermo del Toro’s live-action HELLBOY movie? They really do seem to have established themselves as the vocal embodiment of their respective characters.
I certainly never considered using anyone other than Ron for HELLBOY but I didn’t realize how much the fans appreciated the crossover until the reactions started coming in. Frankly, it was great not to have the headache of casting the major leads. Even more surprising was the reaction to Peri Gilpin as Kate Corrigan. As soon as it was announced there were positive responses. Her character of Roz the producer on the Frasier TV series was very sarcastic but she is able to give Kate a warmth that fits the character perfectly.
It’s a fairly unusual situation in the world of animation to have such big stars involved. Was is difficult getting the likes of Ron Perlman, Selma Blair, Doug Jones and John Hurt on board?
It wasn’t hard at all. I owe that to Guillermo who made filming the movie such a great experience that the actors were looking forward to coming back to the characters. And Selma is thrilled that there are Liz PVC figures and busts. Usually just the boys get those.
It’s common knowledge that you’re a big fan of the HELLBOY comic books. Presumably this has both its advantages and disadvantages for you when working on the HELLBOY: ANIMATED features? Could you explain briefly what those advantages and disadvantages are?
I think the advantage was mostly to Mike. He wasn’t faced with having to explain the character to someone who asks if HELLBOY has to be red. I’m also more respectful of Mike’s wishes than most producers and directors. As a fan, it never occurred to me to rethink the character or “make him my own.”
The disadvantage is that I’m more familiar with the character and his world than most fans. There’s a danger of being too inside, of assuming something is easy to understand for someone exposed to HELLBOY for the first time. That same Mignola quirkiness that keeps it from being too mainstream can be disorienting to a newbie watching. The DVD is turned on with the expectation of a superhero movie and instead they get a strange mix of pulp, humor and horror. Of course, that’s what makes it so cool in the end.
One of the extras on the BLOOD & IRON DVD is a terrific, fun HELLBOY: ANIMATED short, IRON SHOES, featuring the vocal talents of Dan Castellaneta. How did IRON SHOES come about ?
We really want to give added value to our DVDs. I think our commentaries are interesting because I’m lousy at the normal “Everything I did was wonderful” shtick you hear on many DVD tracks. You’re more likely to hear, “Ooh, see that thing there? Yeah. I shouldn’t have done that.” There’s an e-Comic which is basically a HELLBOY story scanned into a computer and another behind the scenes documentary. But Anchor Bay wanted to do more and asked if there were any cut sequences. We joked, “No, but if you want to pay for it we’ll animate one.” They surprised us by asking how much it would cost. That turned into the idea of doing a short subject based on one of Mike’s simpler stories. There’s not a lot of meat to it because it’s only a couple of minutes long but the reaction to it has been really positive.
Can we expect to see more HELLBOY: ANIMATED shorts in the future?
They paid me to write another six with the idea of producing them in a more limited way for the internet. We’ve explored many techniques since the economics of web cartoons don’t allow for the full animation you see in THE IRON SHOES. Some are based on HELLBOY short stories or sequences within those stories and some are completely original.
How likely is it that we’ll see a third HELLBOY: ANIMATED feature? I believe you’re already working on the script for THE PHANTOM CLAW in anticipation of getting a Green Light on the project. How is that coming along and what kind of impact will the filming of The Golden Army have on your production schedule?
The script for THE PHANTOM CLAW is done. We’re anxiously awaiting the go ahead for production. Of course, Ron Perlman is already in Budapest filming the new movie so we’ll have to work out a recording schedule. Maybe a digital patch, maybe me on a plane to Budapest with microphone and an iPod. It’s a problem I’d love to deal with since it would mean we’re on our way to more HELLBOY goodness.