ComingSoon Editor-in-Chief Tyler Treese spoke with Orion and the Dark director Sean Charmatz and producer Peter McCown about the animated Netflix movie. The DreamWorks duo spoke about Charlie Kaufman and integrating different types of animation into the film. Orion and the Dark will start streaming on the streaming platform on February 2, 2024.
“Orion seems a lot like your average elementary school kid — shy, unassuming, harboring a secret crush,” reads the movie‘s synopsis. “But underneath his seemingly normal exterior, Orion is a ball of adolescent anxiety, completely consumed by irrational fears of bees, dogs, the ocean, cell phone waves, murderous gutter clowns, and even falling off of a cliff. But of all his fears, the thing he’s the most afraid of is what he confronts on a nightly basis: the dark. So when the literal embodiment of his worst fear pays a visit, Dark whisks Orion away on a roller coaster ride around the world to prove there is nothing to be afraid of in the night. As the unlikely pair grows closer, Orion must decide if he can learn to accept the unknown — to stop letting fear control his life and finally embrace the joy of living.”
Tyler Treese: Sean, I love the sketchbook cutaways in the first act. I thought it really gave the film a fun style. Can you speak to using those to show both Orion’s anxiety and his overall imagination?
Sean Charmatz: Yeah, it’s a thing that we see in animated films a lot, but I was really excited about the idea of making Orion’s drawings look genuinely like they’re drawn by a 10 to 12-year-old kid. And I think we accomplished that. I think it feels really authentic to a kid’s drawings. I love the multimedia that we have in the film. We have a 2D, Brave Little Toaster-looking animation at one point with the recycling commercial.
We have the sketchbook drawings that are 2D, and then we have the film that’s CG. So, I think that having all those multimedia moments is cool. I love the boiling thing on the line, too. When I was growing up, Bill Plympton was really famous for doing this boiling line thing. It was just an exciting opportunity to showcase work on the film that felt like it was, actually, genuinely from the main character, which is cool.
Charlie Kaufman wrote the script and I’m such a huge fan of his. How did working with that as the base come about, and how was it working on something that fans might not expect from him?
Peter McCown: Yeah, I mean, Sean and I are huge fans of Charlie’s work. We talked about it all the time. I studied Charlie’s scripts when I went to film school, so he got this wonderful book from Emma Yarlett, this Orion and the Dark high concept, and I think he really sank his teeth into it. This was years ago. He produced a couple of drafts of the script, which he just expanded that world.
I think he’s so strong in the kids’ space, and I really hope he continues a little bit more in the kids’ space because of his whimsy and his creativity and the expansion he can do to really anything with introducing these new ideas, but then tying them up so brilliantly. I think he’s perfect for this, and he brings a little bit of an edge to it that you want. It’s not your stock animated fare anymore. I think he brings it to a different level, but also, most importantly, with the main character, he’s able to explore main characters in this and in his other works that are extremely real and extremely complex. I think you don’t always get that in animation. My hope and my dream is that he continues in the kids’ space for sure — at least in the family space.
Sean, I love the meta element of the dad telling his daughter a story. What was most fun about playing with those layers that the story has?
Sean Charmatz: Surprising the audience. I think that that’s probably my favorite thing as a filmmaker is creating something and then doing something that the audience is not expecting. It might take them a minute or two to figure out what’s going on. I think those are things [that], in the animated film space, people freak out and worry about, like, “They’re not going to be ready for that.” And I’m like, “Yes, that’s what I want. That’s going to be exciting for them.” So I would say to just keep the film as surprising as it is. It’s a real treat, and I feel like the audience appreciates that. They’re not sure what’s going to happen next. I think that’s really cool.
