Wild Robot Director on “Playful” Pedro Pascal, Voicing Lilo & Stitch

A lot of elements had to align to make The Wild Robot a success, not the least of which involves maneuvering voice star Pedro Pascal‘s packed schedule.

Director Chris Sanders‘ feature for DreamWorks Animation topped the box office in its opening weekend and held well for a second place finish this weekend. Based on the book by Peter Brown, the animated film centers on Roz (Lupita Nyong’o), a robot that gets delivered to an uninhabited island and must find ways to interact with the animals who don’t want her there. Its voice cast also includes Kit Connor, Bill Nighy, Stephanie Hsu, Mark Hamill and Catherine O’Hara.

During a conversation with The Hollywood Reporter that was conducted at the Annecy Animation Festival shortly after the film’s presentation there, Sanders and producer Jeff Hermann discuss assembling the top-notch stars, possibilities for a sequel and tackling themes involving encroaching technology amid an animation landscape dealing with AI. Plus, Sanders teases his return as the voice of alien Stitch for Disney’s forthcoming Lilo & Stitch live-action movie.

I’m impressed that you nabbed Pedro Pascal for The Wild Robot, given that he might be the busiest person in Hollywood.

CHRIS SANDERS He absolutely is. We have to give full credit to our casting director, Christi Soper, who suggested Pedro and many of these actors. We just feel so fortunate that he signed on to do this, and oh, my gosh, he is amazing. He was so inventive and funny and has a very playful nature. As we developed his character, that really was the way that we went. In one of the last recording sessions, he said that this character is more him than many that he plays, and he really enjoyed it.

JEFF HERMANN Coming into it, he thought that we were looking for more of what he was doing on screen already — with Mandalorian, The Last of Us, Game of Thrones — and we kept pushing him back to his own persona. Once he realized that, he got so excited and embraced it. We got him just before everything exploded with The Last of Us, and from that point forward, his schedule became very busy. We’re so lucky to have gotten Lupita, Pedro and Kit, who are strong actors with very distinctive voices. They’ve all done voiceover work in their careers, but not to the extent of what we’re asking them to do now.

Hollywood has been grappling with the increasing impact of technology on the industry. Was that topic on your mind with this story?

SANDERS It’s at the core of the story that Peter wrote, is the high technology in conflict with nature because Roz is where she shouldn’t be. Roz has her programming, and she quickly learns that the animals on the island have their programming, and theirs is an uncompromising thing. It’s a life-or-death situation that they live in every day. But all the characters must exceed that programming to get to the end of this story, and it’s a really wonderful message. It’s very inspirational and aspirational that, even if we feel perhaps trapped in our lane, we can have the ability to learn, grow and change.

HERMANN In that growth, the story also suggests this idea of community that, in each of us outgrowing our programming, we can find commonality in each other and form something bigger. In essence, he’s using technology and nature coexisting as a parable about all of us.

SANDERS One of the most important parts of getting the story onto the screen and having it resonate as completely as possible is that the environments are all hand-painted. When you look at the skies and the backgrounds, they’re matte paintings done by human beings with brushes in hand. We always talk about the backgrounds in [Hayao] Miyazaki films and the backgrounds in Bambi.

Do you have thoughts about where AI is heading for the animation space?

SANDERS All I can say is that the human element in this film is what made the difference. There is not, and there never will be, a substitute for that.

Given that there are multiple books, is there a chance for more films as well?

HERMANN Definitely, hopefully. We were very aware that this was an ongoing story that Peter was telling, and in trying to stay true to the essence and the basic structure of what he created in the first book, we were trying to create something that could act as a stand-alone in the event that we never could go further, but also definitely leaving that possibility open of continuing it, as we would very much love to.

Chris, how has it been to revisit Stitch after voicing the character in Lilo & Stitch?

SANDERS I continue to do his voice for different things. Every once in a while, I’ll go into a booth and do some recordings, and it’s always nice to hear about how he’s still out there, and people still know who he is. They really like him as a character, and it’s just wonderful. How do you describe that?

Is there anything you can tease about voicing Stitch in next year’s live-action movie?

SANDERS I have been able to see a few things, and I can’t tell you what I’ve seen. But they allowed me to see some peeks of what they wrote, too, and it’s really cool.

What are your hopes for the future of animation?

HERMANN Hopefully, what this movie can do — much like Spider-Verse and [Teenage Mutant Ninja] Turtles and other things — is push the visual boundaries and reopen the gates, so to speak, in terms of what the limitless possibilities are for animation. But also, the subject matter and the issues and emotions that this film deals with will hopefully remind everyone that these films aren’t just for little kids. They’re for everybody, and anyone of any age can enjoy an animated film. That’s certainly something we’re setting out to try to do with this one.