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EXCLUSIVE: The Wild Robot Director Chris Sanders On Adapting Peter Brown's Book For The Screen: 'A Great Deal Of...'
In an exclusive interview with Pinkvilla, Chris Sanders discusses the challenges of adapting Peter Brown's The Wild Robot for the screen, highlighting the responsibility of capturing the story's essence.
After releasing in the US on September 27 following its Toronto International Film Festival premiere on September 8, The Wild Robot is all set to captivate Indian audiences with its October 18 release. Just a day before the highly anticipated animated sci-fi film’s debut in India, Pinkvilla had the opportunity to sit down with the film’s screenwriter Chris Sanders, who also directed the film. He shared the challenges he faced while adapting the story for the screen from Peter Brown’s book of the same name. Here’s what he said.
Beginning by noting that Brown’s book served as a guidebook and provided structure to his script, Sanders acknowledged that, despite the assistance from Brown’s published work, he felt “a great deal of responsibility” about getting “the core” of Chris Stover’s story right for the screen. Stover, for those who may not know, is the film's cinematographer, and since this is an animated offering, his vision becomes even more significant.
To present a cinematographer's story "intact" on the screen, Sanders explained, “it means sometimes you have to trim things back. It’s somebody else’s words initially, so you feel a bit funny doing that, but you have to make room for certain things to resonate, breathe, and really develop.” And so that’s what he did as a writer.
In some cases, though, he said he did the opposite of trimming, and instead, added complications to the plot, as he believed it had more potential. Sanders noted he “didn’t want [the story] to feel like you could see where it was going too far down the road. I wanted more development and surprises.” The screenwriter assured fans that he aimed to both streamline and add complexity to the film’s plotline, but always to preserve the core of Stover’s story for the screen.
Elsewhere in the conversation with Pinkvilla, Sanders praised the film’s powerful star cast and discussed his favorite scene. However, we won’t be sharing that just now with our readers, for fear of spoiling the experience for you.
The Wild Robot, featuring voiceovers from Lupita Nyong’o, Pedro Pascal, Kit Connor, and more, will be in theaters near you starting tomorrow.
The film follows Nyong’o’s character Roz, a service robot shipwrecked on an uninhabited island, who must adapt to her surroundings and forge bonds with the local wildlife to survive, per IMDb.
Produced by DreamWorks Animation, the film is distributed by Universal Pictures.
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