With DreamWorks Animation's Spirit Untamed opening in theaters this weekend, I recently spoke to director Elaine Bogan about making the animated adventure. If you haven’t seen the trailer, the film is a heartwarming tale about the relationship between a young girl and the wild horse she encounters when she returns home to a small town at the edge of the open frontier. The voice cast also includes Isabela Merced, Julianne Moore, Jake Gyllenhaal, Marsai Martin, Mckenna Grace, Walton Goggins, Eiza Gonzalez, Andre Braugher and Eiza González. Spirit: Untamed is the next installment in the Spirit: Stallion of Cimarron franchise, which includes an Emmy-winning TV series.
During the interview, Bogan talked about how the film changed during production, the challenges of trying to make this movie in two years and during a pandemic, how technology has evolved to help make animated movies even better, why they removed an action scene from the second act, what she’d like people to know about what it takes to make an animated film, and more.
Check out what she had to say in the player above and below is exactly what we talked about followed by the official synopsis.
Elaine Bogan:
- What does she wish she knew on the first day of making Spirit Untamed that she didn’t know?
- What was it like trying to test the movie to see what was working during the pandemic?
- How did the film change during production?
- How from start to release they only had two years to make the film.
- Why they removed a sequence from the second act.
- What does she wish people knew about what it takes to make an animated movie?
- What technological hurdle might be overcome in the future that would help to make animated movies even better?
Here’s the official synopsis for Spirit Untamed:
An epic adventure about a headstrong girl longing for a place to belong who discovers a kindred spirit when her life intersects with a wild horse, Spirit Untamed is the next chapter in the beloved story from DreamWorks Animation.
Lucky Prescott (Isabela Merced, Dora and the Lost City of Gold) never really knew her late mother, Milagro Navarro (Eiza González, Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw), a fearless horse-riding stunt performer from Miradero, a small town on the edge of the wide-open frontier.
Like her mother, Lucky isn’t exactly a fan of rules and restrictions, which has caused her Aunt Cora (Academy Award winner Julianne Moore) no small amount of worry. Lucky has grown up in an East Coast city under Cora’s watchful eye, but when Lucky presses her own luck with one too many risky escapades, Cora picks up stakes and moves them both back with Lucky’s father, Jim (Oscar® nominee Jake Gyllenhaal), in Miradero.
Lucky is decidedly unimpressed with the sleepy little town. She has a change of heart when she meets Spirit, a wild Mustang who shares her independent streak, and befriends two local horseback riders, Abigail Stone (Mckenna Grace, Captain Marvel) and Pru Granger (Marsai Martin, Little). Pru’s father, stable owner Al Granger (Emmy winner Andre Braugher, Fox’s Brooklyn Nine-Nine), is the best friend of Lucky’s father.
When a heartless horse wrangler (Emmy nominee Walton Goggins, FX’s Justified) and his team plan to capture Spirit and his herd and auction them off to a life of captivity and hard labor, Lucky enlists her new friends and bravely embarks on the adventure of a lifetime to rescue the horse who has given her freedom and a sense of purpose, and has helped Lucky discover a connection to her mother’s legacy and to her Mexican heritage that she never expected.
Spirit Untamed is the next chapter in DreamWorks Animation’s beloved franchise that began with the 2002 Oscar-nominated film Spirit: Stallion of Cimarron and includes an Emmy-winning TV series. The film is directed by Elaine Bogan (Netflix and DreamWorks Animation Television’s Trollhunters: Tales of Arcadia) and is produced by Karen Foster (co-producer, How to Train Your Dragon). The film’s co-director is Ennio Torresan (head of story, The Boss Baby), and the film’s score is by composer Amie Doherty (Amazon’s Undone, DreamWorks Animation’s Marooned).
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