In director Adam Shankman’s long-awaited Disney+ sequel Disenchanted, fans return to Giselle’s (Amy Adams) whimsical world of fairytales and happily-ever-afters. The movie picks up 15 years after Giselle and her true love, Robert (Patrick Dempsey), married and elected to stay in our world in the first Enchanted movie. Now, Giselle is beginning to feel disenchanted with the hum-drum of the city and seeks to reignite a fantastical spark by moving their family to the charming small town of Monroeville. Once there, Giselle realizes her fairytale life may not be such a simple fix and looks to her storybook home of Andalasia for guidance, thus causing magical mayhem.

During his interview with Collider’s Steve Weintraub, Shankman explained why Disenchanted perfectly embodies his current state of mind, the difficulties with VFX during production, and shares how the sequel flipped from a theatrical release. He also reveals what made Hocus Pocus 2 possible and discusses his involvement in getting the Enchanted sequel made. You can read the full transcript below, or watch the video above.

COLLIDER: If someone has actually never seen anything you've done before, what is the first thing you want them watching and why?

ADAM SHANKMAN: Okay, that's such a mean question because I think it would be one of three. I think it's Walk to Remember, maybe, which is probably not the answer you expected. That feels really the most internally true for me. That's my internal life. Hairspray would be my external life. Does that make any sense to you?

disenchanted-amy-adams-featured (2)
Image via Disney+

It does, and there's no wrong answer here. It's just, there's going to be people watching this who've never seen anything you've done.

SHANKMAN: Right, yeah, that's true, and nor should they. But yeah, Walk to Remember is this little, teeny tiny sweet love story. It’s simple. There [are] some curve balls in there, because even if you get to what's her truth and what's going on with her, what he then does is very unexpected and pretty heroic, for me. I hope to think that I'm that big a person and that good a person and that my love is that honest.

Now, Hairspray is very much all my external stuff. I am Tracy. I understand that with every fiber of my being. Why would anybody not want me to dance with? Why would anybody not want anybody to dance with, whoever? If we can all do this together, what is wrong with everybody? For crying out loud, just do what's right, because nothing else makes sense to her. So that feels also very, very true for me as well.

Then this movie is, not to be all segue and stuff, but this movie is very, very true of my current state, which is learning to accept the way the world works, and how am I happy? What is it that I need to do? What do I need to do inside of the world in order to have the most peace and joy in my life? And that's to accept that life isn't always great and to really own that and go, “It's all of that stuff that makes the fabric of life rich and interesting, frankly.” I wouldn't want it any other way. I wouldn't want “Happily Ever After” as it's prescribed in a fairytale book, because that means that life suddenly goes into a flat line of just like blissed-out nothingness.

Yeah, I mean what’s funny is, you might get bored if everything was perfect all the time.

SHANKMAN: A thousand percent. There's nothing to do. Life stops.

So I'm friends with a bunch of directors, and they all have been telling me about the chaos of the VFX industry and how it’s so difficult to get things done. How did the VFX bottlenecks that are existing affect your movie?

SHANKMAN: Quite a bit. There was a lot of stuff that I didn't see till very, very late in the game. I'm lucky that I worked with a team that largely got it right. Because if stuff had come in late that had not been good, and I'd had to send it back, I don't know that I would have it there. I think, more than anything, what people are dealing with is, the bottleneck is what the bottleneck is. The problem is, it's the release schedule. I think it says a lot about how much VFX is woven into the industry now and how dependent we are on VFX, that now our release schedules, and how many movies are held back, because of this. You know what I mean? It was like, there was some rough riding. I'm lucky. I got everything pretty much done.

Idina Menzel as Nancy in Disenchanted
Image via Disney+

I've spoken to a bunch of people that have not, and it's very interesting. So I have to ask you, you're a producer on Hocus Pocus 2.

SHANKMAN: Yes.

Massive hit for Disney+. I know this is going to be a huge hit for Disney+, but is there a little bit in your heart that’s like, ‘I wish it was in movie theaters?’

SHANKMAN: Of course.

Because for me, I mean I want the movie industry to survive, and they need movies. So there's that balance.

SHANKMAN: Oh my God, I'm so happy for your T-shirt right now. I just clocked it. I got him. I’m loving it, so happy. Anyway, so yes. [Hocus Pocus 2] was always designed for Disney+. I don't know if it would exist, if it weren't for Disney+, to be perfectly honest. The service is the one that really convinced the higher-ups to make it. Because streaming is just an animal that cannot be sated. You must continue to have all the content.

Our movie flipped during early COVID when they were really making all these determinations. Would I love there to be even a limited theatrical release of this movie? Of course, the movie's very big. The movie has scale. It also has some operatic moments, and big emotion, and all of that tied to it. Also I want to see [Amy Adams’] and [Maya Rudolph’s], and everybody's performances 70 feet wide because I'm a movie guy. That said, this is what it is, and I'm thrilled because am I going to miss no opening weekend and the terror of that? I'm not going to miss that terror. I'm good.

I was just going to ask you, there is some, as a director, there is some relief knowing I don't have to be worried about the Friday numbers.

SHANKMAN: And I'm always worried about the Friday numbers. Especially the kinds of movies that I have historically made are uncertain at the box office, so it's nerve-wracking. It's nerve-wracking, so I won't miss that. I make a lot of comedy and the experience of a shared laugh in a room is something I believe we could all benefit from these days.

maya-rudolph-in-disenchanted
Image via Disney+

How much did you guys debate on the story of what this movie would be? Because I'm quite surprised it's taken this long to make an Enchanted sequel. I've been asking Amy, and everyone else for years, "When is this actually going to happen?" But I am curious how you guys ultimately decided on what the story was going to be that you wanted to tell.

SHANKMAN: They'd been working on it forever. I had a meeting at Disney. I talked to Sean [Bailey] about what the ideas were around this movie, and I said, "Can I walk away and think about it for a second because I might have an idea here." I came back. I pitched what is basically the story, and I think he found that really, really intriguing and intriguing enough to put it into development in this direction. Then I worked with Barry [Josephson], Richard LaGravenese, ultimately Brigitte Hales, Amy, and then Alan [Menken] and Stephen [Schwartz], of course, to make this go. The story of Giselle not accepting the world as it is, struggling with living in the real world, feeling distant from herself, and then ultimately realizing she's consigned herself to being the stepmother, which is for Giselle, a very bad thing, was always the pitch. That was always how we got her there. Also, I believe this story of turning the whole world into a fairytale, that was something that I'd pitched, too. I was like, "She's not a fish out of water in the world anymore, so you got to make everybody else the fish out of water."

It's tough because it's like, and this is very film-makery talk, but it's like I didn't have the fish-out-of-water story to work at, which is most of the comedy of the first movie, the fish-out-of-water hook. It's also a romantic comedy, the first one. Well, unless I'm telling a divorce story with her and Robert, and nobody needs to see that. So it's different. So how do you make the movie feel like the first movie without having any of the things that theoretically made the first one a big hit? I'll tell you how, Amy Adams and the rest of this cast, and that's what you do. You go with, "Well, where have these characters gone?" You put them in a place where they are all patently dissatisfied with their lives.

Disenchanted is now streaming arrives exclusively on Disney+.