With Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation arriving in theaters this past weekend, I recently sat down with director Genndy Tartakovsky to talk about making the sequel. In the third installment of the very successful franchise, Drac (Adam Sandler) decides to take his family on an ocean-going cruise. The twist here is that Drac is feeling a little lonely despite the many monstrous companions that join him on this journey and he’s looking for a little companionship. But the trip turns into a nightmare for Mavis when Drac ends up falling for the mysterious captain of the ship, Ericka (Kathryn Hahn), who hides a dangerous secret.

During the interview, Genndy Tartakovsky talked about where the idea came from, the ever growing popularity of the franchise, what he learned from the test screening process, why testing animated movies before they’re done is extremely tough, how he got Mel Brooks to voice a character, why he loves storyboarding, and so much more.

Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation also stars Andy Samberg (Johnny), Selena Gomez (Mavis), Kevin James (Frank), David Spade (Griffin), Steve Buscemi (Wayne), Keegan-Michael Key (Murray), Molly Shannon (Wanda), Fran Drescher (Eunice), and Jim Gaffigan (Van Helsing).

Check out what Genndy Tartakovsky had to say below.

Collider: Being honest, the entire reason you made this movie was to work with Mel Brooks?

TARTAKOVSKY: Always, yes. Working with Mel is ... Look, I mean he's my comedy inspiration. I grew up on his films, I've analyzed them, so it's just the biggest perk in the world to work with him.

Is it one of these things where agents were involved or did you reach out direct about getting him in a movie?

TARTAKOVSKY: I'm trying to think what was the ... We came up that who else could be Adam [Sandler]'s father but Mel Brooks, and so ... I'm trying to think if Adam reached out. No, I think we reached out to his agents, and he seemed interested, and then he came in and we talked, and then yeah.

You're like then you made that meeting go five hours because-

TARTAKOVSKY: Right. I mean, he's pretty amazing at 90, 92, he's just as animated. He tells all his stories, and it's great.

Yup.

TARTAKOVSKY: Yeah.

So the first movie was successful, and then the second one was more successful. Were you a little surprised at the growth of the franchise?

TARTAKOVSKY: Yeah. I mean, I think it really grew internationally, a lot bigger. Here, domestically, it definitely did more, but not to the ... I think it did like 20 million more or something, right. So there was still a thirst for it, but I felt like it wasn't a hundred percent yet, like we still haven't captured ... it hasn't clipped a hundred percent. Internationally it kind of did, and was I surprised? No, I go through these things by the seat of my pants, and it's so hard to make a movie, and there's so many ups and downs and ins and outs that I don't think about ... you don't think about the big picture.

Sure.

TARTAKOVSKY: You're just like this, and then it's done, and then all of a sudden it's coming out, and you're like, "Right. What did I do? Are people, are they going to get this at all, or is this completely from left field? What is it like?" You start to appreciate the reality of it, because even though we have test screenings with a recruited audience, it always plays differently when people pay to see it.

Of course.

TARTAKOVSKY: Right, and that was an interesting dynamic where I remember on the first one it would good reactions from the test screenings and they laughed at certain things, and then when I went to see it the opening weekend and I saw it with a paying audience, they laughed at different things. I can't quantify it, but there's a change.

I want to get into the test screening process, but because the second film is even bigger. It's almost like 500 million worldwide, how often was Sony calling you being like, "So do you got that idea? So do you got that idea? Oh, do you have that idea?"

TARTAKOVSKY: It was a, now you gotta remember, the second one was finishing right at the time of the Sony hack.

Yeah.

TARTAKOVSKY: So all of that was looming all above us. We would have these crazy meetings of people, you know, all the e-mails come out, and some e-mails where between like Amy [Pascal] and Adam, and we were in the middle of all that storm, and so you're dealing with all that stuff. You don't know who's going to get fired when. Somebody's going to go. You know that's going to happen. Meanwhile, we're trying to get this movie done, and so it was a very tumultuous end, and everybody got fired and replaced. Right. Almost at the very end, so Tom Rothman came in, Kristine Belson came in, and so all of a sudden everybody that you were making the movie with is gone, and now there's all these new people, and the movie's successful, thank god, and then now what. It was a tough experience making it, and so I was like, "Well, I'm just out. This will be easy. I wouldn't do this under these conditions again."

Then they start calling, and I say no.

Was it Tom? "Hey ..."

TARTAKOVSKY: No, no, no. It was Kristine. She's like, "Well, let's talk about this seriously." And I go, "There's really nothing to talk about." Then that year I went on a cruise with my family, and the idea came, and at the same time I was actually also doing started Samurai Jack, so that was right after Hotel Transylvania 2, and that was like a creative restart for me. Like, right, this is what I do, and this is really good, and I'm comfortable, and I'm like it just spewed out of me. Then I pitched her, because they had a whole different direction that they were going, and I pitched her this idea, just to see if they would even be interested in it, and everybody loved it. It clicked right away. Cruise, yes, of course. Dracula falls in love, yes. Then I got the opportunity to write it with Michael McCullers, and then it felt like it would be the right fit right after Jack.

Sure. I'm sure the studio was very happy when you said, "I think I have an idea."

TARTAKOVSKY: Yeah, they were. But I mean, they were on their way to something different.

Oh, they were doing it no matter what?

TARTAKOVSKY: Oh, yeah.

What do you think it is actually about these characters that audiences like love?

TARTAKOVSKY: I mean, I only have my perception, but basically I think they love the silliness, it's light hearted. The animation, there's a physicality to it that you enjoy it on a visceral level, and it's about a family, so there's ... and it's a big family, and so there's something accessible for everybody. Like, "Oh, that's my father-daughter relationship" or "There's our relationship as our kids ..." So there's something for everybody in it to kind of grab on to. And in our dark days of this world all over, sometimes it's nice to go into movie theater and escape, and I mean that's why I go to the movies, right.

I've had this conversation with a lot of people. Listen, I look at a movie like Stronger, which is excellent. Made no money. Deepwater Horizon, really well made film. Made no money. I think more and more people are looking for escapist fare.

TARTAKOVSKY: Right. And this is light, and humorous, and funny, and not preachy, and it's-

Completely. I'm curious, you mentioned the test screening process earlier. What did you learn through test screenings that impacted the finished film, or do you really make a lot of changes during the test screening process?

TARTAKOVSKY: We do, we do. The problem, like it's a love-hate relationship with me and test screenings, because I like seeing it with an audience, as a general sense, but now we're testing them in storyboards.

Oh, that's hard.

TARTAKOVSKY: Yeah. So, you expect, and for this third one, it was the worst experience in the beginning, because we had a hundred percent storyboard screening, right, and because you saw the movie, yeah?

Yeah.

TARTAKOVSKY: There's a lot of physical humor, right?

Yeah, and also the animation, the way that the animation in this movie is a specific look.

TARTAKOVSKY: Yes.

And it adds a lot to it.

TARTAKOVSKY: Yeah, so if you take out the color, take out the animation, take out all the grand sense, and the effects, and the spectacle, and you're stuck with these 2D drawings, right. All of a sudden, I don't know, 70% of the entertainment is gone, and now you just watch it, and all the jokes fall flat to a degree, because they're physical, because you need the animation, and we have a terrible screening. The studio's on me like, "Well, what are we going to do. It's not playing well." I go, "You're missing the whole point. Is that this movie isn't going to test well until it's done."

Completely.

TARTAKOVSKY: "Because you're missing all these elements." Credit to the studio, they did believe me to a degree, and we fixed more of just the story issues, but we kept a lot of the jokes the same, because all the jokes were going to be gone.

Oh, wow. Yeah, that's not going to work.

TARTAKOVSKY: No.

But you have a track record. It's not like you're some new director who's never done animation. Do you know what I mean?

TARTAKOVSKY: Yeah. But when you're going to battle somebody like a Tom Rothman, who was like, "People didn't laugh. You're done. That's it."

Sure.

TARTAKOVSKY: It's cut and dry for him, because he doesn't view me ... it's not like I'm Steven Spielberg or ... live action and animation is always separated, and no matter what I've done in animation, it somehow doesn't translate if I had the same success in live action.

When you were animating this movie, what was the sequence that took forever to get done, the one that you were never happy with, and you just finally had to let it go?

TARTAKOVSKY: Let's see. I mean, the dancing, Dracula dancing was rough, because it was we wanted to do unique dancing and funny, right, so that was hard. Not let go ... There was one little scene I would say that took us probably six weeks, and it was only like a second long, and when Ericka and Drac are together at their date, he moves the chair and she sits down, and then he does this little articulated suaveness when he sits down, and just that little part, because what we were trying to do is we were trying to convey Drac's acting, all pantomime, right, convey this over confidence before the awkwardness sets in, and make it entertaining and funny, and so I worked the animator for like six weeks to get it done, and then the amazing thing was then we had a screening in Annecy, it's like a thousand people, right-

No pressure.

TARTAKOVSKY:... in a screening, and when that scene happened, the whole audience laughed. That's golden. That's what it's about—

And that's when you sent it to Tom, and "See. I told you."

TARTAKOVSKY: Right. No way that was in the storyboards.

Sure.

TARTAKOVSKY: It wasn't anywhere except when we started to do the acting, in animation visually, we're like, "How are we going to convey Drac's over confidence?" And he does this multiple swirl things where he sits down, and it just had the perfect rhythm, the right pose, and the right situation.

Totally. I'm going to dig back into the test-screening thing one more time. So, how did the story change as a result of test screenings, or did it not change that much?

TARTAKOVSKY: It really didn't change tremendously. It was a lot of tightening. Like the Van Helsing explanations were probably too long, so we kept condensing them. We realized that less is more with that storyline, and then really it's the playing of the gags. Some gags ... we were trying a lot of different things, and one really interesting story is we had the storyboard version of the “Hi, Bob” joke, right.

Sure.

TARTAKOVSKY: Because Tinkles was kind of a later addition, because they thought there could be more stuff for kids, and maybe you could put a Tinkles in. So I'm like, "Sure." So I boarded the “Hi, Bob” thing, and it was exactly the way I wanted it, that I thought it was going to be funny, and then screening happens, nobody laughs. Completely dry. I'm like, "Oh, no. What did I do? Am I missing some element?" So I started to re-board it. And I re-boarded it again, and I go, this doesn't feel right. I'm doing too much for this little gag. Then I go, you know what? It's boards. People are just not getting it. It's got to be visual. The 3D character in the trench coat is ridiculous looking, and that's what's going to sell it. So I told everybody, "Back off! I'm just going to trust it. It just has to happen." They were like, "Okay." Then finally we started to see the animation, and all the animators are laughing. Right, which is always my first sign that something's working, and then we had our next test screening where all of it was animated out, and then all of a sudden everybody laughs. Same boarding, same execution as the initial version, and then all of a sudden I hear kids behind me, "Hi, Bob. Hi, Bob. Hi, Bob."

So that's a very interesting, because I could've easily gotten rid of it because it fell flat.

Sure.

TARTAKOVSKY: So you have to at some point start to realize and have confidence in what jokes you really believe in, and you have to fight for, and someone's like, "Eh, that was a half ass grab at a laugh. We're going to try something better."

I know I'm out of time. I'm going to ask one last quick thing. You board all your movies. Or you boarded this. Am I wrong?

TARTAKOVSKY: I did a lot of boarding in this movie.

Right, so when you're getting ready to board, are you sitting down like, "Oh, F." Or are you like, "Bring it."

TARTAKOVSKY: No, no. I love it. Boarding for me, like in the days of Dexter, was really hard, because I couldn't draw as well, and I had people around me who drew really well, so it was hard. I always felt like as the director, I gotta be the best at everything.

Right.

TARTAKOVSKY: Right, that was like the mentality. Think of Chuck Jones. He drew better than everybody, right, and then I started to realize like, "No, no, no. I'm the guiding force, so I don't have to draw as good as everybody." But through the last 30 years I've gotten a lot better, and so now I don't struggle with the drawings as much where before I'd be like, "Argh, how do I draw this?" Now it just flows out much more naturally, and because I've done so much, because I boarded through Powerpuff, through Samurai, through Clone Wars, all of it. There's a much more confidence and experience, and so when I have a good sequence, and usually I end up getting the really hard ones, because I have a vision for it and to execute it, and like you know, I boarded more than half of the Jack episodes, the new ones, and it was super fun, so I never go like, "Ugh." It's more about like, "Yeah, this is going to be a great challenge, and how do I sell this."

Totally. If you don't have that energy, I think it's time to check out.

TARTAKOVSKY: Yes.

You know what I mean? Thank you so much.

TARTAKOVSKY: Thank you.