Trolls: Band Together co-directors Walt Dohrn and Tim Heitz shared a bit about creating their latest Trolls franchise movie and getting the band back together.
Interview Walt Dohrn and Tim Heitz on Trolls Band Together
Walt, you are no stranger to animation. How do you approach working on something like a full-length feature versus a series? Because you have a lot of series experience.
Walt Dohrn: Yeah, go way back, to the second season of Spongebob, I got really trained, I think in comedy on some of my TV work. But as I came to movies, one thing that was larger, bigger, was the reality or the authentic emotional architecture of the characters, like they really live even beyond the movie itself.
And the scope and scale of the worlds we get to build with this unlimited technology here. So again, it’s the bigger story, bigger characters, bigger worlds.
Tim, you’re you have a huge background in animation as well. What kind of prompted you to move into the directing world?
Tim Heitz: You know, I started out as a story artist, I got a job at DreamWorks or started as an intern at DreamWorks as a story artist and have been with the company since I graduated school. And I’ve worked on so many movies at this point.
I think part of the job of a story artist is to really figure out how to make the characters as relatable as possible, how to bring jokes and gags to every moment you can, and to really dig in and explore the emotional depth of the story retelling.
So I think it just kind of becomes an organic path to wanting to tell stories, you know, to want to be the person who sort of gets to steer the ship in a way you know, we are so collaborative here at DreamWorks. So it feels like everyone’s voice matters. And we always want everyone to feel ownership of these stories. But just coming from that, that place of being a story artist, I think it’s sort of a natural transition to want to direct.
Speaking of voices and collaborating…Walt, I noticed you have a lot of voice characters in your repertoire. Tim, this looks like your first voice character. Did you get any guidance from Walt on doing this voiceover or how did that come to be?
Tim Heitz: I mean, I’m lucky to get to watch Walt at work every single day and you know, to get to sit in the recording booth with him when he records his lines and seeing how he just shows up and he’s sort of he’s so playful and natural and just open to trying out all these different things. Definitely was inspirational to me, and get in there and give it a shot. You know, I can’t hold a flame to Walt’s incredible voice work that he’s done, but it was a fun sort of first go at it, and I look forward to hopefully doing some more of it.
When you have a franchise like this, fans have Easter eggs that they look for and hunt for from movie to movie, the series, TV episodes—whatever. Do each of you have a favorite Easter egg and the film?
Walt Dohrn: Well, there’s one and maybe it’s not so much an Easter egg but it’s a fun kind of callback or reference to the first film is in the big kind of wedding medley. Bridget sings a tiny bit of hello in the song itself and that she’s singing the Lizzo song but she goes quickly into this Lionel Richie song and looks at this photo on her mirror of King gristle and that is a reference to chose one if people hadn’t seen that one. So there’s that one.
Tim Heitz: That’s a great one. I also like in Viva’s house, inside the ice cream cone and the mini golf land that she lives in. Her bed is actually a giant roller skate, which is meant to be the same kind of roller skate Bridgette uses and Trolls one, as well. So that’s kind of whether it’s actually Bridgette’s skate or just a similar one because they’re in a Bert Bergen golf course. You know, we like that the art team decided to pull one of those into the space and reuse it a little bit of a callback.
The elephant in the room for this movie is talking about NSYNC and kind of their regrouping and writing a new number. How did that kind of come to be and how was it working with them on this song? Did you guys get to have any interaction with that?
Walt Dorhn: Oh, yeah, we definitely got to work with them, and it first came out it was kind of a couple of years into working on the movie. And we work so closely with Justin, you know, he’s a huge collaborator, not just the voice of brands, but he’s executive music producer comes up with a lot of gags and everything. He’s very involved. And so I think just very organically working with Justin and kind of this whole boyband angle and talking about his experience within sync. It just led up to at one point, Justin went to our producer Gina Shea, and said, “Hey, what if I bring the boys back together on this thing?” And our heads explode? And we’re like, “This is incredible!” It’s so good, we couldn’t even have in the beginning think of that as a possibility. You know, it’s a suggestion he would have to make and feel comfortable with, so then it was great. They were so much fun, right? And they got to help design their characters.
Tim Heitz: You know, it was one thing for him to say, “Oh, I want bring them back for a song.” But he was even like, “You know, can we get them in the movie as well as characters.” And so we sort of sat and sort of thought how we could give them this sort of fun cameo at the end that would hopefully be exciting, you know, for NSYNC fans and for Trolls fans and feel organic to the story that we were telling. They were just they were so great to work with. And so excited about being a part of this. And we were so excited to have them. It was kind of a dream come true in a lot of ways, and we’re so thankful that it worked out.
Walt Dohrn: But it had to be Top Secret; we had to really keep the secret just for 9 months. Like nobody could know, just a small group of people. As we started working on it a little bit more, you’d have to let another person in another person. At a certain point, there were people even animating who didn’t even realize that these were members. These were the new guys. So it was it was a hard secret.
That nine months is like hiding a baby.
Walt Dorhn: Having a movie is like having a baby. A lot less painful.
It’s a lot of work on both counts. Any other exciting things on the horizon for either of you? Any more Trolls properties that we can talk about coming down the horizon?
Walt Dohrn: We always say we’d love to make more. There’s what’s cool about tours, it’s so exciting to us. It’s that this endless, like never infinite well of ideas and imagination. You know, we’ve talked a lot about these characters and so many other stories we could tell. So it just depends if the world wants it. We’d be happy to do it.
Tim Heitz: It’s a Creative Sandbox sandbox that I think we could never get tired of playing it. Like there’s there like you’re saying, well, there’s just so many possibilities. Anything can happen in this world. The characters are so fun to spend time with. I think for us, we could just keep going and go on and and not get tired of it.
Well, they’re so much fun because they’re great for every age, right? It’s not just little kid-oriented or adult-oriented. It’s one of those franchises that hits for everybody, which is so much fun. So did NSYNC confirm their reunion tour when they were working with you guys or…? Okay, just checking.
About Trolls Band Together
Poppy discovers that Branch was once part of the boy band ‘BroZone’ with his brothers, Floyd, John Dory, Spruce, and Clay. When Floyd is kidnapped, Branch and Poppy embark on a journey to reunite his two other brothers and rescue Floyd.
Rating: PG
Runtime: 91 mins.
Director: Walt Dohrn and Tim Heitz
Screenplay by: Elizabeth Tippet, Kim Caramele, Lloyd Taylor
Based on the Good Luck Trolls created by Thomas Dam
Cast: Anna Kendrick, Justin Timberlake, Kenan Thompson, Walt Dohrn, Anderson .Paak, Ron Funches, Kunal Nayyar, David Fynn, Kevin Michael Richardson, Eric André, Daveed Diggs, Kid Cudi, Troye Sivan, Camila Cabello, Zosia Mamet, Amy Schumer, Andrew Rannells, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Zooey Deschanel, Aino Jawo, Caroline Hjelt, and RuPaul
Trolls Band Together is available now on DVD, Blu-ray, and 4K.
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