Even though the filmmakers were still hard at work, finishing Ralph Breaks the Internet, a.k.a. Wreck-It Ralph 2, in time for its November 21st release date, they invited members of the media out to Walt Disney Animation Studios on August 1st to preview various parts of the film, in layout form, with rough animation, and with some final shots. Directed by Rich Moore and Phil Johnston, the new film will see best friends Ralph (voiced by John C. Reilly) and Vanellope von Schweetz (voiced by Sarah Silverman) leave the safety of Litwak’s video arcade behind, as they venture into the world of the internet in search of a way to repair Sugar Rush, so that Vanellope can return to her video game.

With a variety of panels showcasing how the story developed, figuring out how to bring the world wide web to life, the way they designed the population of the internet, and creating the Oh My Disney sequence, we were able to get a feel for what the movie would be, knowing that there were still aspects that we’d have to wait to discover in the finished product. Here is a collection of 20 things to know, from everything we learned about the highly anticipated sequel, and click here for my interview with the filmmakers.

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    When Wreck-It Ralph opened on November 2, 2012, it had the highest opening weekend ever for a Walt Disney Animation Studios film, at the time of its release. Now, Ralph Breaks the Internet is the 57th animated feature from Disney Studios, which is 95 years old, this year.
  • Directors Ralph Moore and Phil Johnston started talking about revisiting the characters of the first film, back in 2014. That’s when they wondered if there were more stories to tell with Ralph and Vanellope, but needed a really good reason to make a sequel. Then, they came up with taking the characters out of their small arcade and into the expansive world of the internet, which had opportunities for comedy and conflict.
  • As the film developed and evolved, there were about 15 story artists on the story team. Even though they storyboarded 153 sequences for the film, there are 45 sequences total, in the final film. There were 7,883 total sequence versions and 283,839 various storyboards drawn for the various versions of the movie. They’ve had 10 screenings of the film, including an audience preview.
  • One of the early story ideas for the film had Vanellope getting sucked up into the internet. She had her own website, called Vanellope.com, she was giving her own Ted Talk, and she had changed quite a bit, almost forgetting who she was. In that version, KnowsMore was a huge character, and Ralph went to jail after mistaking going viral for being a virus. Ralph broke out of jail with KnowsMore, who was a broken search engine, and they partnered up, in search of Vanellope.
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    There was another early version of the film where Ralph became enamored of himself, and was drunk on his own fame and popularity, and there was an internet supercop villain, who was like an anti-virus.
  • Ultimately, they realized that this is the story of two friends who go from a small town to a big city. They have two different journeys ahead, so they’ll have to see if their friendship can last, or if they’ll be torn apart. The story of the friendship between Ralph and Vanellope is the True North.
  • Ralph, Vanellope, Felix and Calhoun are back, along with the original voice talent of John C. Reilly, Sarah Silverman, Jack McBrayer and Jane Lynch. Additionally, there will be new characters added to the story, including Yesss and KnowsMore (a Netizen who’s the mascot for his own website).
  • Yesss, voiced by Taraji P. Henson, is an algorithm that’s the heart and soul of the trend-making site BuzzzTube. If it’s cool, trendy and now, Yesss has discovered it and shared it with the world. She keeps up with the latest trends, so she constantly shifts the look of her hair and her wardrobe changes from scene to scene. She’ll be important on Ralph and Vanellope’s journey through the internet.
  • To make their animated version of the internet feel like the internet that we use, every day, Moore and Johnston asked their animation team to explore the majesty and grandeur of the internet and do whatever they wanted, with no borders and no limits. They also took a research trip to the building at One Wilshire Blvd. in Downtown Los Angeles because it houses all of the connections for any internet communications in North America. On the inside of the building, there are miles and miles of wires, and tens of thousands of servers that connect the world.
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    They thought about not using the actual names of websites in the film and instead using plays on those names, but because they were creating the internet and all of us use it, every day, they wanted to use the names of the websites we actually go to. Because of copyrights, the names can be in the film without having to ask for permission.
  • The workings of the internet are similar to a major city with different districts, and a city can’t operate without its citizens. There are the Net Users, who are the avatars of real-life people, and the Netizens, who are the full-time citizens of the internet that work at the various websites and apps. The Netizens fulfill all of the actions that the Net Users need to perform on the internet, so they are essentially the worker bees.
  • On a typical animated feature, you might have to populate a street. But when you’re populating the internet, it takes a whole lot more characters to populate it. Wreck-It Ralph had 223 unique characters total and 421 variants. Ralph Breaks the Internet has 434 unique characters total and 6,752 variants, with over 500,000 unique options. With colors, different textures, t-shirt logos, hair colors and skin tones, you’ll hopefully never see the same character twice in this movie.
  • The technology has grown, substantially, since the first film. They’ve written a brand new renderer and made major advances in hair and clothing, as well as rigging techniques, so the previous characters all got an upgrade. The clothing on the characters looks a lot richer and more detailed, the skin is warmer and more flesh-like, and everything is crisper.
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    The sequel picks up, right where the first film left off. When the arcade is closed, Ralph and Vanellope spend time together and everything in their life is absolutely perfect. Until one day when their after-hours ritual is interrupted by Mr. Litwak plugging in something new, known as wifi.
  • When a kid playing Sugar Rush, Vanellope’s game, accidentally breaks the steering wheel off of the console, because the game’s manufacturer went out of business years ago, Mr. Litwak thinks it might be time to just let that old game go. But the kids in the arcade don’t want to see that happen, so they find a steering wheel for sale on eBay, but that steering wheel is so expensive that Mr. Litwak decides to unplug the game and sell it for parts, leaving Vanellope without a game. At the same time, it hurts Ralph to see how sad Vanellope is, so he decides that they’re going to sneak into the wifi router, go into the internet, find eBay, and get that steering wheel, so that Vanellope’s game will be saved and everything can get back to normal.
  • While Sugar Rush is unplugged, all of the other candy racers are also without a game. In need of parental figures, they turn to Fix-It Felix and Calhoun.
  • To create the visual look of eBay, they thought about the real-world equivalent, which would be an auction house. That means it would have auctioneers, so they enlisted Brian Curless, the reigning U.S. champion auctioneer. Curless had never been in the state of California before, but they flew him out to voice the animated version of himself in the film. To make him feel comfortable at the recording session, Moore and Johnston played the roles of the people bidding on auction items while Curless was the auctioneer.
  • The storyboard artist who first worked on the eBay scene had never bought anything on eBay before, so she went onto eBay and bought a black velvet painting of a cat with sorrowful eyes. And then, that painting made it into the film.
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    The filmmakers felt they had a responsibility to not just show the good of the internet, but also the bad underbelly of it. At one point, Ralph learns a lesson that you should never read the comments on anything that you post because people can be very mean.
  • Yesss sends Vanellope to the Oh My Disney website, which is everything Disney with a little bit of Comic-Con thrown in. That website is where all of the Disney princesses live, and they were able to get all of the living original actresses back to voice their characters. They did the scene first with temp voices, so the filmmakers knew what the scene was about when they approached the actresses, and everyone was game to sign on for something that would be both irreverent and respectful.

Ralph Breaks the Internet is in theaters on November 21st.

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