The Magician’s Elephant is Netflix’s newest animated film, based on the classic Kate DiCamillo book, and is now streaming on Netflix.
The Magician’s Elephant Interview
During a recent press event, I had the chance to chat with director Wendy Rogers and producer Julia Pistor about their latest film, The Magician’s Elephant. In our The Magician’s Elephant interview, Wendy and Julia shared about Netflix’s newest animated film, based on the classic Kate DiCamillo book.
Director Wendy Rogers and Producer Julia Pistor, The Magician’s Elephant Interview
This film marks Wendy Rogers’ directorial debut. With her visual effects background, did that inform her approach to directing? The answer lies in who she is as a person.
“You know, it’s hard for me to say whether my background—how much my background—influenced it because I’m just me, I’m my background and all of my influences over the years,” Rogers said. “And when I read the book, I mean, it captured my heartstrings and made me cry. And I could see it at that point, we had an amazing team that works from some inspirations that I had.”
The animation and design teams they worked with, “really took those inspirations and elevated into, you know, I think very unique, world-building, very physically grounded, but that lets the moments of magical realism and magic play against in juxtaposition. So I guess it did, but I think it’s really just because that’s who I am not in any particular way that I curated the visual effects.”We know that adapting books for the screen can be a little difficult at times. Were there aspects of the book that were harder to translate to the screen than others, or anything that you wanted to include, but weren’t able to?
“I think that their apartment, it’s an ensemble, so there are a lot of break characters. And we couldn’t get all the characters into the story into the length of a movie. We couldn’t make it three movies. So we had to sort of cut some things down that made us sad. I don’t know if you know, the book, but Tomas and Bartok when but I think that we were able to keep the pivotal scenes and the end the main themes of it. Yeah, it is hard. The feeling of the book is now the truth of the main characters,” Pistor said.
Listen to the full podcast episode here.
THE MAGiCIAN’S ELEPHANT – When Peter (voiced by Noah Jupe), who is searching for his long-lost sister named Adel (voiced by Pixie Davies), crosses paths with a fortune teller in the market square, there is only one question on his mind: is his sister still alive? The answer, that he must find a mysterious elephant and the magician (voiced by Benedict Wong) who will conjure it, sets Peter off on a harrowing journey to complete three seemingly impossible tasks that will change the face of his town forever. The Magician’s Elephant is based on Two-time Newbery Award-winning author Kate DiCamillo’s classic novel. Cr: Netflix © 2023
About The Magician’s Elephant
Based on the novel by Kate DiCamillo, The Magician’s Elephant tells the story of a young boy in search of his sister. When young Peter crosses paths with a fortune teller in the market square, there is only one question on his mind: is his sister still alive? The answer is that he must follow a mysterious elephant. This sets Peter off on a remarkable journey to complete three seemingly impossible tasks. These magical moments may change the face of his town forever.
The Magician’s Elephant is now streaming on Netflix.
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