Rabbit Redux
Richard Adams’ hugely popular novel Watership Down is adapted into a stunning new four-part animated miniseries, which arrives on Netflix this month.
Fantasy has a special power to both illuminate and entertain the young and the old equally. A look at any list of beloved tales across any storytelling medium will show the longstanding power of tales as diverse as Alice in Wonderland, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars and the Harry Potter series.
It is respect for the power of this kind of story that led director Noam Murro to Watership Down, Richard Adams’ beloved 1972 novel about rabbits seeking survival, safety and a new home. Previously adapted as a popular animated feature film directed by Martin Rosen and released in 1978 and as a TV series that ran from 1999-2001, Murro has chosen a middle ground for his adaptation: a miniseries of four one-hour episodes produced by the BBC and Netflix, coming to screens globally just in time for Christmas.
Adams’ novel is an unusual text, telling the tales of a group of rabbits who flee their warren before it’s destroyed by modern construction and then struggle to find and establish a new, safe home in the world. Along the way, Hazel, Fiver, Bigwig and friends experience a range of encounters with humans, other animals and even other rabbits as they operate in a very human-like power hierarchy that decides who is worthy and who is not. The lengthy tale convincingly creates an entire world, complete with intricate rabbit language and a detailed society and history.
Design, art direction and revisualization on Watership Down was done by Painting Practice in the U.K. Storyboarding was by House
of Cool in Canada and CG production by Prana Animation Studio in India. The project is a 42/ Biscuit Entertainment production, produced by Eleos Productions and co-produced by Brown Bag Films.
Building an Allegorical World
Murro, who previously directed the live-action comedy Smart People and the sequel 300: Rise of an Empire, never encountered the book (or Rosen’s movie) until a friend recommended it to him as an adult, but immediately fell in love with it upon first reading.
“There is an allegorical, philosophical and social commentary that’s embedded in [the story],” says Murro. “Part of the beauty of it is that it doesn’t show it, it doesn’t boast that part of itself.”
Murro contacted Rosen, an executive producer on the series, and acquired the rights to the project, intending to explore the deeper themes in the narrative.
”The book is essentially a post-
World War II account,” he says. “It lives in the same dystopian world of George Orwell, in the sense that it does offer a window into the world as it was back then, the world as it was when it was written in the 1970s, and certainly what the world is today. Just turn on the news and listen to that for 15 minutes and you see, this book is relevant today. Migration, home, loyalty, friendship, nationality — all these things that are really at the heart of it are relevant today, maybe more so than at any other time.”
With the book so beloved, Murro says any adaptation will be scrutinized by fans all over the world, requiring an approach that was faithful to the text
and to the themes it explores. That lead to the idea of creating a series of four one-hour episodes, at least partly to tell the complete tale faithfully.
”The BBC, I understood very quickly that they — wonderfully so — feel responsible for this national treasure, so to speak, and they want to do right by it,” says Murro. “There was never really a discussion of who was it for; that was already determined by the text. So the idea was to keep it faithful.”
A Fresh Canvas
As a newcomer to a fully-animated project, Murro says he saw a large canvas that had plenty of fresh territory to explore by using animation to tell a straight dramatic story us-
ing traditional cinematic techniques.
”In animation, there is a danger where anything is possible. Nothing really exists, so you can create anything, and I always find that is a real danger,” says Murro. His approach was to treat the show like it was real cinema: The camera could never be positioned anywhere a real camera could not go, the virtual lenses would be based on real lenses, and the film would use conventional film storytelling techniques in its structure, logic and transitions.
”That served a very specific thing, which is the tone,” he says. ”That is how you do drama in cinema and it shouldn’t be any different in creating animation, whether it’s rabbits or people or whales or cars or whatever it is. The idea was to create a very coherent aesthetic that serves A, story and B, tone. I think you can see it in it and that was quite an important element.”
Murro says the aesthetic of the series came from looking at dioramas, specifically the world-famous diorama rooms at the New York Natural History Museum. “The movie is a diorama. It is a painted background with extreme realistic foreground, so there’s almost three planes: the animals and characters in the front, the environmental aspects of where
this is happening, and then the backdrop.”
The animal characters are generally anatomically correct and behave only in ways that real rabbits, birds, etc. would. Much of their distinctiveness as individuals comes from the performance of the voice cast, which includes James McAvoy, Nicholas Hoult, John Boyega, Ben Kingsley, Gemma Arterton, Daniel Kaluuya and Rosamund Pike.
Murro says he wanted to make sure the story worked as a radio play. “If it didn’t work as a radio play, it wouldn’t work at all,” he says.
Working in animation was enjoyable, but harder than expected, Murro says. “You have to imagine a lot more than you do in live action, especially if you’re trying to look like live action. Things take time, they are hard to change. You have to block things in your head because there’s no location … I didn’t think it would be that hard, and it was really hard.”
“This is a perfect vehicle for parents worldwide and people in general to have a discussion with these themes of violence and anger and jealousy,” says Murro. “All those themes that are in the book are here [in the series] and it’s for us to be able to not ignore them, put them aside or cover them, but to expose them in a responsible way.” ◆
Watership Down premieres on Netflix on December 25.
— ‘The movie is a diorama. It is a painted background with extreme realistic foreground, so there’s almost three planes: the animals and characters in the front, the environmental aspects of where this is happening, and then the backdrop.’ Director Noam Murro
Doc McStuffins
video of what the story that eventually became Star would be. I came to them with smaller skills at the time, but that was an awesome experience. It ended there, but I think what I got out of that experience was that this is not that scary. Now I’ve pitched all over town, and I’ve never had a horrible experience.
The worst that anyone has ever said is, ‘Oh, okay, that’s not for me.’”
Nefcy is not the only one seeing women make big leaps in animation, specifically at TVA. Some of them have also made it a point to stress diversity when hiring for their own shows. “Speaking from my experience, there does seem now to be a kind of rising of women, especially in the writers room,” says Krista Tucker, series developer, co-producer and story editor for Fancy Nancy, who has also written for shows such as Doc McStuffins, Sofia the First and The Lion Guard.
“On Fancy Nancy our entire crew is more than 50% women and I love that,” notes Tucker. “When I was hiring for my writers room, I was interested in having 50/50. I think that there’s just more of awareness now. And I do feel that there’s always room for improvement. I would love to see more women in showrunner positions, created by positions and director positions. I’ve written on 14 shows and I’ve only had three female showrunners. So, it’s time — but I do feel that it’s happening, and that’s wonderful.”
Both Tucker and Nefcy are seeing the results of a growing interest in working in the field as more women study animation and vfx in college.
Toon Boom for Everyone
“More women are pouring into the industry and more women are writing for animation,” says Tucker. “The understanding of the benefits of having more women in leadership roles on a broad level is happening. If we want to write authentic stories, well, women are half the population. We are all different individuals — men and women — and we all have something different and unique to bring to the table. We want full inclusivity and diversity and I think only good can come from that.”
While the influx of women into animation schools and animation staff rooms is happening, there’s also an atmosphere at TVA that both Tucker and Nefcy believe supports women and diversity.
“Disney, in my experience at TVA, has been very inclusive,” says Tucker. “They very much reward good work and hard work whether you’re male or female. I absolutely feel completely at home at Disney. I remember how nervous I was getting my first freelance script and Disney has stuck with me all the
way. I definitely worked hard to deserve my place here. They reward hard work and creative vision.”
Top executives at TVA have also made it their mandate to honor the concerns of women who may have felt uncomfortable or outright threatened with a zero tolerance policy that’s meant to send an unmistakable signal.
“We’re making sure people feel safe to come forward if they feel uncomfortable with environments,” says Meredith Roberts, Senior Vice President, Animation Strategy, Disney Channels. “We want to make sure the environment is safe for people and that it’s professional. And that doesn’t mean you can’t have disagreements, but I think that as we work out disagreements it’s important to leave people intact and have fast resolution so people can get on with their day job.”
Roberts has long believed in the importance of including female voices in a place where strong female characters have been a tradition and a source of box office and ratings success.
“I think having more women behind the scenes creating and showrunning and being head writers results in having more empowering characters, because you have women writing for women. So, I think that the trend that you’re seeing of empowering women characters that don’t need to be saved is happening across the board in feature films and in television, and it’s long overdue,” says Roberts.
New Role Models
She adds, “I think the modern girl is many things and no longer sort of tied to the legacy [stereotypes] she might have been in as a princess or in the kitchen. Now it’s a modern girl who can be a tomboy or can be a doctor or can have a career in math and science, and when we illustrate that in an animation series, the success tends to be a trendsetter. These inspirational characters live for both boys and girls. You’re looking to have to the broadest appeal to children that’s age appropriate and developmentally appropriate. Kids fall in love with our characters and hopefully learn something along the way.”
Roberts also worked on Disney’s Tinker Bell titles, which re-imagined one of Disney’s most well-known characters with a very modern focus. “We very much were interested in appealing to STEM and thought that the ultimate STEM character in the vault was Tinker Bell, and that we could lean into her curiosity in a way that was appealing to boys and girls. I think that the direct-to-video release did well, and they were released internationally and did very well,” she adds.“We had a lot of fun creating her insatiable drive to understand what makes things tick.”
These things — which seem to be on trend — have been in effect at Disney TVA for a long time and make up the vast experience for some long-time employees of the division. It’s also why they’ve stayed and grown their careers there.
“I’ve been at Disney TVA for 25 years this year and so many of the people that I work with today I worked with 10, 15, 20 years ago,” says Lisa Salamone Smith, Senior Vice President, Production, Disney Television Animation. “There are a lot of new people now because we’ve grown so much, and I think that we really have a naturally really nurturing group. It is people that care passionately for what we do here and it’s not very ego-driven. It’s really about the work, and that contributes a lot to that kind of environment that’s collaborative and has a feeling of camaraderie.”
Smith is also quick to point out how that sort of mandate just becomes the way things are done at a company.“I think
it comes from the tippy top — Lisa Salamone so, we have Gary Marsh who is just calm in the face of whatever is being thrown at him,” says Smith. “I think that when you’re working with someone who is very thoughtful then you can take that approach and everybody sees that is the approach that’s recognized. Along the way, every one of our department heads takes that same approach. And everybody is very interested in the career growth of the people on their teams. You feel like you can do anything here. We’ve had people come in starting with production and then realize they want to go into the artistic side of things and they’re very supportive of that here. We’re very open to people figuring out what they’re most passionate about and then getting them to the right place.” ◆
‘We want to make sure the environment is safe and professional.That doesn’t mean you can’t have disagreements, but I think that as we work out disagreements it’s important to leave people intact and have fast resolution so people can get on with their day job.’ Meredith Roberts, SVP Animation Strategy, Disney Channels — — ‘I had the opportunity to give a lot of women their first job in animation on Star, and they all kicked so much ass and it was really cool to see.’