2024-10-03 18:16:40
For several years, a children’s book by the writer Peter Brown about an intelligent robot that gets shipwrecked on a desert island was on the shelves of the DreamWorks film studio. The company bought the rights to the story, but didn’t know what to do with it – until Chris Sanders picked it up.
The director of the popular animated films Lilo & Stitch or How to Train Your Dragon decided to avoid introductory explanations or dialogues, ignore established procedures and throw the audience straight into the story. He also chose an unconventional art style, combining hand illustration with computer animation.
“When I presented my vision to the studio, they said that they bought the rights to the book precisely because of something like that. That they wanted to make a movie that would be different,” says Chris Sanders in an interview with the AP agency. “That’s one of the strengths of DreamWorks. They’re willing to try something new. And they kept their word,” he adds.
Now the bold decision is paying off. The film called Rozzum v divočína, which has also been shown in Czech cinemas since last Thursday, dominated the attendance chart in the first weekend in the USA and Canada. It exceeded expectations by taking in $35 million and is garnering positive reactions. On Rottentomatoes.com, for example, it has a score of 98 percent from both viewers and critics.
According to film market expert Paul Dergarabedian of the analytics company Comscore, the newcomer could be able to repeat the improbable success of last year’s Pixar animated film Between the Elements. Although it grossed only $30 million in its first weekend in the US and Canada, which was extremely disappointing given its high budget, it continued to perform against all expectations for many weeks to come, eventually grossing nearly half a billion dollars. “It is possible that Rozzum will show similar stamina in the wild,” says the analyst.
In the film, a robot designed to carry out tasks assigned by humans is shipwrecked on a desert island. She tries to offer her services to various animals, until she becomes the adoptive mother of an orphaned baby and finds meaning in its upbringing. In the meantime, however, its manufacturers, who are missing the machine, are looking for it. And the protagonist must manage to prepare her adopted baby bird to fly to warm countries before winter comes.
The book version of the movie Rozzum in the wild has three parts. | Photo: CinemArt
According to the AP agency, the film, whose heroine is voiced in English by the well-known actress Lupita Nyong’o, is already being talked about as a possible Oscar candidate. “The story is timeless and I really like the basic premise that kindness can be a way to survive and that sometimes a machine has to go beyond what it’s programmed to do,” says Lupita Nyong’o.
Director Chris Sanders highlights the film’s visuals. According to him, it could not have been created in this form twenty years ago. “Every centimeter of what you see on the canvas, every surface, gravel, every flower was painted by a person,” emphasizes the sixty-four-year-old creator.
“When I started in the industry, everything was drawn by hand. Then computers came along and thanks to them it became possible to do wonders, but at the same time we lost a little of the magic of handwork. Now we can combine both processes and take the best of each.” he praises himself.
According to him, his colleagues also liked this film world. “It’s usually the case that even if people like something, after three or four years they’ve had enough and are already looking forward to another project. Here, everyone fell in love with it and nobody really wanted it to end,” says the director.
The company has not yet announced a possible continuation. The book by the forty-five-year-old American writer and illustrator Peter Brown, which was published in Czech translation by Olga Bártová in 2019 by the publishing house Mladá fronta, nevertheless has three parts. The director has already announced that he would like to make a second film if there is interest.
The Wild Minds adaptation premiered as DreamWorks celebrates its 30th anniversary. It was founded in 1994 by former chairman of the board of directors of Walt Disney Studios Jeffrey Katzenberg, Oscar-winning director Steven Spielberg and former head of music publishing David Geffen.
To date, the company has released 49 feature-length titles that have grossed over $17 billion. The most successful ones, such as Shrek, Kung Fu Panda or How to Train Your Dragon, have become established series.
“Every film studio experiences better and worse times, but the DreamWorks sagas have always appealed to me,” says Margie Cohn, who has been president of the company since 2019. “Their films were never elevated above the children, they were always made for the whole family. And you feel respect for the tradition of animated films,” he claims.
According to the AP agency, not only the success of Rozzum in the wild confirms that there is still interest in the genre. Three animated movies made it to the top ten most watched movies of 2024: Kung Fu Panda 4, Me, Villain 4, and above all In the Head 2, which is the most successful movie of the year with worldwide sales of over 1.6 billion dollars.