There’s no better movie screening to squeeze in at home before the end of International Pride Month than Oscar-nominated animated fantasy, and webcomic adaptation, Nimona on Netflix. Yesterday we uploaded the first part of our interview with the animated fantasy’s co-director Troy Quane. A truly special film was made more special by the ability to chat to Quane at this year’s Comic Con Cape Town.
While Part 1 delved into the chain of events that saw Nimona cancelled far into production (due to Disney’s closure of Fox animation studio Blue Sky), and then revived against the odds, Part 2 looks at the reality of making a movie during a pandemic, and the aftermath. Below you’ll learn about what scenes never made it into the final cut, how Nimona creator ND Stevenson was involved in the project, and how 2023 was a standout for animation in general.
Noelle (Pfangirl.com): On top of everything, Nimona was in development during COVID. How did that work?
Troy Quane: We made the whole movie. So before us there was the original creative team, our production designers, and there was a different director that originally started the movie, Patrick Osborne – brilliant filmmaker, very visual guy. So they’d been developing Nimona for a while when they’d asked us [Quane and co-director Nick Bruno] to take over the film, after we finished Spies In Disguise in Christmas 2019. We came on board in March 2020.
We had five days in the studio before they went, “We’re gonna go home for two weeks…” and then the rest of the movie was made twice from home over COVID. Because we made it at Blue Sky, [Disney] shut down Blue Sky, and then we had to remake it all again at DNEG, once again, all from home, during COVID.
Thank goodness for the technology that made that remote collaboration happen.
Troy Quane: I think that’s the silver lining from what was an incredibly chaotic and crazy global situation, the technology that’s come from it. And the realisation that work flows like this can been amazing. Before, it was a question of what artists you had in your studio, or could you afford to relocate or people, or even who would be willing to relocate? That was it. Now… when we made Nimona, we had artists in Montreal, Vancouver, L.A., New Zealand, Mumbai, London, anywhere!
I can reach out to an artist in South Africa like, “Listen, dude, I love your style. I’m developing a film, would you work with me?” And that workflow exists now. I think it’s just become the new reality of what our industry is. I think that’s incredibly exciting because it’s going to give us a lot of diverse voices, unique experiences, different styles. I think it’s going to make things really exciting. It’s a little crazy, a little terrifying and exciting all at the same time. But it should be. That’s why I like places like this [the Cape Town International Animation Festival] and meeting new talent, seeing new studios.
Was there anything you wanted to include in Nimona that maybe you storyboarded and it never made it into the final cut?
Troy Quane: That’s a great question. It’s amazing that people have not asked that question more. Honestly, because of the creative freedom we talked about, surprisingly, everything we kind of wanted is in the movie. There was one scene that didn’t make it in the movie. It’s probably for the best. It wasn’t a story point, it was just ridiculous. We found it hilarious.
In the graphic novel, there’s a point I think that Nimona cuts her head off and she can grow it back and it gets really bizarre. In the film, there’s a moment where she turns into Ballister to distract everybody. We had a version once where he’s like, “We need a distraction”. She’s like,” I’m on it!” and she cuts her arm up and just starts to firehose blood everywhere in the most grotesquely hilarious Monty Python way. Like it was nuts. Cooler heads prevailed and said maybe we should step that back a little bit.
But it also made sense because we needed the movie’s story to do different things. As far as the character of Nimona goes, we needed to believe that while she’s very tough, she’s eternal, she does feel pain, she is hurt, in order for our ending to work. So that moment, while we thought it was hilarious, fought that a little bit.
Nimona is an adaptation of a web comic by ND Stevenson, also an animator. Were they involved throughout, was there any collaboration or what was the level of intersection? Because, I mean, you’re essentially handing over your baby to the filmmakers.
Troy Quane: I will say ND is brilliant as a creator, especially in terms of such a personal project. I can’t even imagine how hard that would be if you sign a piece of paper and say, “Take my baby.”
He had been involved early on, before we had come on, and I think had drifted away from the project a little bit. Just in the sense of realising it was maybe going to be something other than what he had expected. And I think we needed to find that space. When we came on, it was really important for us to reach back out, bring ND back into the conversation because it became super apparent, super quickly that the voice of Nimona is ND. The humour, the tone, all of it.
And so we invited him back to the conversation and it became a hugely collaborative and amazing experience. He did a bunch of writing for us, he would share reels back and forth with us. It’s been so satisfying that the creator loves the movie as much as the book. Even though it’s quite different, the heart and the spirit are the same and he’s found a love for the movie.
It’s a story about a shapeshifter, and the movie is just a different shape that Nimona has shifted into. You know, you’ve got the book and you’ve got the film, and a huge compliment to ND for being able to do that because I’ve worked on other adaptations where the creator was not as good at being able to let go.
What was it like to be nominated for an Oscar?
Troy Quane: It was an out of body experience. It already felt like we’d been nominated for an Oscar when they said we could finish making the movie. Like, we were dead, and what a rags-to-riches story going from “This movie is not gonna get made and see the light of day ever” to us being shoulder to shoulder at an event that stands for the highest recognition you can get in Film.
It felt very vindicating, it felt very exciting and, for us, it felt like it was such a great platform for the story to reach so many more people and at a level that maybe it wouldn’t have otherwise. All of a sudden, people are going like, “I know Spider-Verse, but what’s Nimona?” It brought a level of attention to the movie that I was so happy for.
And then, when the Oscar nominations came out, Netflix put Nimona on YouTube for a week for everyone to watch.
Troy Quane: The YouTube thing, that was great. So a movie is normally in theatres, so if you have your theatrical run, then you could have it on video on demand and then it’ll be on different streaming platforms. With ours, if you didn’t have Netflix, that was it. We had one point of access for an audience.
So we really pushed for that and I will, again, keep giving Netflix credit. They put it out for free on basically their competition’s platform. That says a lot about their willingness to at least expand their idea of how to make the movie accessible because they felt it was important. I give them big credit for that.
What’s next for you?
Troy Quane: You know, there’s all kinds of exciting possibilities, but I’ll be honest with you, it’s a tricky thing to follow up to Nimona. Where you’ve had this amazing experience where the alchemy of everything came together to make such a special and fun story, where you’ve had this creative control and autonomy to do what you wanted to do… to get back into the swing of things and find something that’s going to feel that satisfying is a little tricky.
But I’ve got a couple of things I’m developing and hopefully start announcing some stuff soon. But just having the opportunity to keep telling more stories. I know making a movie like Nimona has definitely made it more important for me to make sure that the stories I do tell have more to say. That they have some importance, they have some relevance. If you have a platform to have an opinion in the world, make it a valuable opinion, make it helpful. So, I’m looking forward to that.
When you love animation, and you start getting older as a viewer, the difference becomes clear between those trite stories that just trot out the same message, and then something comes up that actually has something to say. It just hits different.
Troy Quane: It does! And I really do think this is exciting. This past year, at least in mainstream animation, was such an amazing year and I don’t know if we talk about that enough.
Like, let’s take a look at the Oscars. There was a cross section. You had Spider-Verse, which yes, big IP, but a very different approach on a superhero movie; it’s told in an incredibly different style with really heartfelt, underrepresented and diverse casting. We have a Studio Ghibli, so an international foreign film in anime that isn’t necessarily mainstream, that hit a mainstream audience. We have Nimona, which is a very thematically resonant, stylistically different film standing right up along with it. Robot Dreams, this 1980’s rollback 2D film directed by a Spaniard. There’s such a wild variety. Then we had the new Chicken Run stop-motion, we had the Ninja Turtles. There were just so many movies that could have been up for an Oscar. What an amazing year for just different stylistic films.
I hope the studios sit up and recognize that the audience just said, “We’re savvy; we are much more sophisticated in the stories we can handle and also the stories we’re hungry for.” Hopefully it blows the door open to what will come next.
We now pay attention to what’s up at the Annie Awards, because the Annies also spotlight again, this incredible variety of animation and storytelling.
Troy Quane: It really is, it’s such an amazing team sport, the collaborative nature of it is incredible and it’s such an incredible community. You feel a bit of it being here at Comic Con, it’s all kind of the same community. It’s a global industry that actually is very small. And it’s the kindest, most open hearted, wonderful people in the world who somehow find their way into it and it comes through in their work, they get to create the joy and the passion.
And it’s been wonderful being invited by Katie and the group to come and speak about Nimona here [in South Africa]. It’s a wonderful opportunity to meet new people, to come to what is a really exciting and vibrant animation community and get to talk about a project that I love. So, how could I say no?
