Netflix has received high praise for their original series offerings, but while viewers have been focusing attention on live-action fare, the streaming service's original animated shows have been killing it. Their latest animated installment, however, will grab you by the eyeballs thanks to vivid, colorful designs of magical characters set in a richly detailed environment pulled from the vast and varied imagination of Guillermo del Toro. Meet: Trollhunters!

Marc Guggenheim, of The CW superhero series Arrow fame, also happens to be an executive producer on Trollhunters. I had the pleasure of talking to Guggenheim about the upcoming Netflix series, how he got involved with it, what his particular contributions were, and how the series is essentially "del Toro gone wild" when it comes to imaginative storytelling. Guggenheim also reflected on the performance of the late actor Anton Yelchin, who voiced the series' protagonist. As a bonus for fans of The CW's animated series Vixen and the new, upcoming show Freedom Fighters: The Ray, Guggenheim also teased some exciting news.

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Image via DreamWorks

But first thing's first: How did Guggenheim get involved with Netflix's Trollhunters series?

Originally, Trollhunters started out as a movie and I was asked to come in and help with the script. After I had turned in my first draft, Netflix got interested. I was asked to pitch them, basically, what we were doing. Netflix liked it so much that they decided to order it as a series. Suddenly, we went from having a feature to having a series on Netflix, which was wonderful.

It turns out that the decision to turn Trollhunters from feature to series was a boon for the project, which had one major complication when it was envisioned as a standalone film:

A lot of the discussions centered around the challenge of, how do you cram all of the character development and mythology into an hour-and-a-half long feature film?

 

In many ways it was a surprising blessing that Netflix expressed interest in doing this as a series because suddenly the biggest problem we had facing the film, which was limited real estate, became not a problem at all. I always sort of feel like a lot of times these projects, they show you what they want to be. Trollhunters always wanted to be a series.

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Image via DreamWorks TV

Having a wealth of rich mythology and lore to draw from is a good problem to have, but it was still an issue during the filmmaking process. However, the series gave the creators a chance to mine the vast imagination of del Toro and let him run free:

It was “del Toro gone wild.” I had met with Guillermo [del Toro] a whole bunch of times as we were working on the script for the feature; this was, by the way, five years ago. It was about a year of working on the feature with Guillermo and a lot of conversations about … truth be told, the vast majority of the conversations were about the challenge of taking this incredible rich and detailed world, and deep mythology that Guillermo had developed and established in the young adult novel that was the prior iteration of Trollhunters.

 

I think actually what was wonderful about having this feature film background in addition to working on the script, there was also over a year’s worth of visual development being done on the feature side. So the look of what became the show, all the characters, Troll Market, Arcadia, all of that had been visualized back when it was a feature. One of the things that’s truly wonderful about the series is that we never lost our feature roots, and we never made compromises to “cram it into a television show.” In fact, I think even the look of the show to me is more reminiscent of the look of a feature than it is the look of a TV show. I think, in the best possible way, probably not for our producer Chad Hammes, basically this show just became a very, very long, big movie.

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Image via DreamWorks TV

It's very apparent in watching the first couple of episodes of Trollhunters that there are a lot of influences from del Toro and Guggenheim's formative years that are at play in the series. Guggenheim couldn't say enough good things about del Toro's vast store of pop culture knowledge:

One of the great things about Guillermo is the way he brings in and encourages his collaborators to bring in all of their influences. Certainly the Amblin films are a definite touchstone for us. There’s also all these other influences: Visually there’s Tolkien and there’s a lot of architectural influences, Craftsman style and a Post-Modern influence. The project really pulls together all these different visual and cultural touchstones. I think that’s something that is sort of a hallmark of Guillermo’s work, much the same way George Lucas did with Star Wars and Indiana Jones, Guillermo is really great at producing new art out of an original combination of his interests and influences.

 

Given his preponderance of his work in features being in horror or at least not kid-appropriate, I just think what’s great is that Trollhunters offers an opportunity to basically introduce a whole other generation to Guillermo’s vision. Kids who probably should not be watching Crimson Peak can absolutely enjoy Trollhunters.

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Images via Netflix

 

While del Toro deserves the lion's share of the credit for the imaginative series, Guggenheim also got some of his own contributions in. He talks about his influences, inspirations, and even an Easter egg here:

Certainly Amblin movies were a big influence on me. There’s a Raiders of the Lost Ark little reference in the first episode. In terms of telling the serialized story, because unlike a lot of animated shows that are very episodic, this show has a deep mythology and the character development does take place over the life of the series, so I was really just drawing on a lot of the dramas that I grew up with that had that level of character development. Even the shows like Amazing Stories, which were very Amblin-esque in its tone, were a big influence. This was such a labor of love for so many people over so many years that I feel like it shows up in every frame.

As great as Trollhunters is because of del Toro's colorful world-building and fluid animation, it's the voice performances that really sell the emotional range of the characters. The bittersweet truth is that Anton Yelchin's performance brings Jim Lake Jr. to life, but it's also one of the actor's final roles. Guggenheim reflected on the shocking, untimely loss of the young talent, and answers whether or not they ever planned to replace his dialogue:

Truth be told, it was never a question that we were keeping Anton’s performance in the show. I would say, for a while, we really tabled the discussion of, not who would replace Anton—that would be impossible and also we were going to keep as much of Anton’s work as he had done, but who could finish out the series for us—we tabled that, put that off for as long as we could. Not that we were in denial but I don’t think any of us really wanted to face that.

 

What was so wonderful about Anton is the depth of his spirit. He was such a genuine, nice, down-to-Earth, wonderful guy. For my part, I think what was so wonderful is to watch Anton give his all to learn how to do voice acting, because voice acting and animation, it is different than live acting as any voice actor can tell you. Anton had never done it before. It was so gratifying to see him learn the ropes to the point where we started writing episodes that took advantage of the greater depth and greater range that he developed as a voice actor. I honestly can’t say enough wonderful things about him because he really was just the nicest guy, just someone you would want to hang out with. It didn’t hurt that he was ridiculously talented.

All 26 episodes of Trollhunters will be available to stream on Netflix on Friday, December 23rd.

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