MISSING LINK

[hughmanity]

Not terribly surprised... since SHAZAM is a family -skewing superhero film, there's the competition, along with LITTLE, I guess. Also, I dont
think Laika traditionally brings in huge numbers.

Apr 10, 2019 21:09:57 GMT -5 jo said:

Variety predicts only a 4th place for MISSING LINK for the weekend, with Shazam and Hellboy to fight it out for first place.

variety.com/2019/film/box-office/hellboy-box-office-shazam-missing-link-1203185689/

Think Laika 

[jo]

[jo]

www.amctheatres.com/amc-scene/exclusive-missing-link-interview-with-director-chris-butler?utm_campaign=sceneblog&utm_content=marketing&utm_launch=2019-04-12&utm_medium=blog&utm_source=twitter&utm_term=na&utm_uid=missinglinkblog

Exclusive Missing Link Interview With Director Chris Butler

11 hours ago

MISSING LINK, opening at AMC today, is the fifth feature from the adventurous stop-motion animation studio LAIKA, which previously made CORALINE, THE BOXTROLLS, and KUBO AND THE TWO STRINGS. The globe-spanning comedy-adventure centers on the furry, eight-foot-tall Mr. Link (voiced by Zach Galifianakis). He sets out to track down his relatives in the valley of Shangri-La, abetted by human explorers Sir Lionel Frost (Hugh Jackman) and Adelina Fortnight (Zoe Saldana).
AMC spoke exclusively with writer/director Chris Butler, who previously wrote and co-directed LAIKA’s PARANORMAN and co-wrote KUBO AND THE TWO STRINGS.


Can you talk about your collaboration with Zach Galifianakis and what he brought to this film?

Well, whenever we make one of these movies, we have a wish list of talent. In my head when I’m writing dialogue, I have an actor in mind — whether or not I get them remains to be seen. In this case, I started writing it many years ago. And with this particular script, I ended up getting my wish list. In my head, Hugh Jackman was Sir Lionel, and Zach Galifianakis was, to me, the perfect mix of comedy and vulnerability and a kind of strange naiveté.
That was vital to the character, because he’s the emotional anchor of the movie. You need to care about this creature; he can’t just be slapstick pratfalls and silliness. You have to care about what he wants.

And that was the great thing about working with Zach — he brings such a nuanced vulnerability to his performance. He is, of course, laugh-out-loud funny, but he provides you so much more than that. I loved what he did with Link — he is great to record with. While we were recording, the way he would change words around or the way he would read one of my lines, I would be in the other room outside the booth rewriting his lines as he was doing them, because I was trying to write them to his voice.




You don’t necessarily think of Hugh Jackman as a comic actor. What made you decide he was right for this part?

He’s so charismatic, and I think that was important for the character of Sir Lionel. I wanted him to be a hero, and there is no bigger cinematic hero in the world than Hugh Jackman. He also needed to bring charm to a character who doesn’t always do the right thing. I wanted to make sure that you still cared about him and still liked him even when he was acting badly.

That’s what Hugh brought that was vital to the character — he is the most charming man you could ever meet in the world. I wanted Sir Lionel to have some of that. And it is a great plus that he’s also very funny, and his English accent is way better than mine.



LAIKA films combine stop motion with computer-generated imagery. Do you have some personal rules for achieving the right balance?

My personal rule is that I want to use whatever is available to put the best possible image on the screen. If we were stop-motion purists and we did everything in camera and nothing digitally, then we wouldn’t have been able to make this movie. Digital technology and certainly our excellent VFX department have been able to knock down the walls.

In stop motion, you’re normally limited by the size of your set and the size of your puppets. But now we’re not. We have a huge amount of set extensions and digital extras, but they’re all informed by the practical reality. Everything we build in the computer is informed by maquettes or sculpts or swatches of fabric. Everything comes initially from reality, from the practical assets. And that way we can hopefully not see the seams, because that’s what you want in the end. You want the audience to watch this thing and be sucked into this world and completely believe in it. We never want people to say, “Oh, I can tell that’s CG.” You don’t want them to think about how you made it; you just want them to care about the characters and what’s happening.

I am by no means a purist. Having said that, I think the reason I love stop motion more than anything is that it is real light on real objects, and you can’t ever really beat that. You can try to and you can do amazing things with the computer, but the imperfection of reality is a wonderful thing. It’s chaotic and it’s random, and it gives you results that you could never make up. That is our cornerstone, and everything is built around that.


When people see this movie in theatres, what details should they look for on the big screen?

People should look out for, I wouldn’t call them Easter eggs exactly, but there’s always a few little treats in these movies. A big thing for me stylistically in this movie is the density and texture. It’s a rich, colorful, beautiful movie, and within that you’ll see lots of, not necessarily gags, but as an example, in Sir Lionel’s study, he opens a drawer, and in that drawer you will see the monkey statue from KUBO and the fairytale book from PARANORMAN. It’s little things like that. The crew themselves, when they’re making these things, they love that stuff, and I think that they are extra-special treats for the audience.

Re the Easter Eggs -- I thought I saw a nod to Barnum(aka Hugh) in one of the scenes

It's easy to spot if you have some familiarity with the real Barnum's start as a museum owner.


Jo

[jo]

and his English accent is way better than mine.

Chris Butler (born 1974 in Liverpool, Merseyside)[1] is a British storyboard artist, writer and director, known for his works at Laika, such as ParaNorman, which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.[2]

Lol - maybe because Hugh did such a great job with his proper "received" English accent

[jo]

[jo]

Another very informative interview from the director, Chris Butler --

filmschoolrejects.com/chris-butler-missing-link/


Interesting excerpts ( Not sure, but there can be SPOILERS***SPOILERS***SPOILERS )

When you place Missing Link next to other Laika films, the one element that stands out is the point of view. This is the first one without children. Was that something you were eager to change or was Laika the one pushing to break free from kid-centric adventures?

The thing is I had three first acts of three different scripts, and they’re all very different, and I gave them to Laika and said, “Do you like any of these?” And, fortunately, they chose the one that I wanted to do the most, which was Missing Link, and I think we both kind of gravitated towards that because it did feel different. I think part of that was that it was an adult protagonist. It was a different tone. It felt like it could be potentially very colorful. So I think, yes, it was both Laika and me wanting something different.



I know Missing Link found its early inspirations from Raiders of the Lost Ark and Sherlock Holmes. Those are huge cultural influences, and bring their own baggage with them. What’s that imaginative filter process look like in the early stages of production?


Well, it was a starting point, really. I’d always wanted to do something that felt like a big action adventure comedy. To be honest, I don’t think we could’ve made this movie before now. From the scale of it, I don’t think it would’ve been possible to make this ten years ago, or even when I was doing ParaNorman. It’s too big, but I think what we’ve learned from the last four movies, and the innovations that we’ve made technically at the studio, it felt like this was the right time to do a movie of this scope and scale.

So as ambitious as it was to try and do a stop-motion Indiana Jones movie, I thought, “If I’m going to do it, now is the time to do it.” And then, of course, it kind of evolves. It becomes its own thing. I don’t want to just copy someone else. I want it to have its own life, its own vitality, and so it became very quickly an odd couple. I’ve described it in the past as Indiana Jones meets Sherlock Holmes meets Planes Trains and Automobiles. So, you cherry pick from your favorite movies, and you can be inspired by them, but ultimately, you have to have your own story to tell.





When I went to Laika Studios last month to visit your sets, I was blown away by how extreme the designs were, and to your point, how you could not have built these puppet sculpts five years ago let alone ten years ago. The advances in 3D printing have been astronomical.


Yes, that is true.




What was your inspiration behind the design of the characters?


Yeah. Again, when I first started, I wanted to do something very different. On ParaNorman, I worked with character designer called Heidi Smith, who came up with the beautifully idiosyncratic asymmetrical designs. So for me, it was like I want to go polar opposite on this one. I want something that’s very stylized but very symmetrical, almost graphic. Simple shapes. That was inspired partly by the way I draw, I suppose.

Initially, I didn’t intend to be a character designer on the movie. In fact, I was looking around for someone else who could come around and make it their own, but the interesting thing was, apart from my writing process, is that I’m always sketching in my notebooks. It helps me write, so I had drawings of these characters that date back maybe 15 years. The first drawing that I ever did of Link is just this very rough, scratchy drawing, and people have since described it as a hairy avocado. There is just something about that drawing, and people kept saying that they thought it was really charming and lovable. I think it was just the simple shape.

So, ultimately, I was like, “I’ve got to start this. There is something in this drawing that I need to pursue.” And then I worked. It was really a small team. It was me, Julian Wells, and Warwick Johnson Cadwell, who himself is a very prolific and highly regarded illustrator and comic artist. And between the three of us, we figured out this whole world, but it was based on the simplest of rough sketches that I did in a notebook 15 years ago...
.

Well, you talk about how technology aids how this film could look now today versus what it could’ve looked like ten years ago. The Victorian era was also an era of tremendous technological advances, and I think we tend to forget about that aspect of the period.

Absolutely, and that was important to the story as well because it’s about stepping out into a bigger world, and it’s about explorers. In a contemporary movie, it just wouldn’t work the same because when you have access to knowledge everywhere, every hour of the day, we know everything. We see everything. There was something about that era when people were really spreading out, and delving into the densest forests. It’s that age of exploration felt exactly right, where the world was opening up.




What I responded to in the film is this idea of confrontation. With change comes confrontation. You have the older noblemen who want to stick to the ways of their exploration, what their idea of man is, and you have Sir Lionel Frost, who is breaking out, and exploring, and discovering something that contradicts what they believe.

Yes. Definitely. I think when you start writing, you just have a feeling in mind. To me, the feeling was fellowship. I think in the past at Laika, we’ve looked at family, and that’s fairly typical for animated movies because it’s particularly resonant for families and kids, but to me, it was the idea of not just family but friendship. The people that you pick to be around you. And so empathy was a big part of it.

It is also about identity, and how your identity is what you give yourself. It’s not what other people put upon you. That was part of the fun of writing it. Having these characters who are very driven, but they’re kind of driven in the wrong direction, and it’s only through their interaction with each other that they realize that maybe these ambitions that they have need to change, and they can find a place that.





My favorite moment in the movie is when Link chooses his name. Susan.

Oh, good.

When I saw that moment in the trailers, I was trying to figure out your point of view at that moment. Was this Susan name just a gag, but in the context of the film, you realize it is about finding yourself, identifying yourself. Pulling this name from a person who inspired him, who saw him for who he was and loved him for who he was. Of course, he chooses Susan as his name.

Yeah, that was really important to me. As I said, I wanted the message to be about choosing one’s own identity. That’s the unfortunate thing, I think, in trailers. I want it to play out as a playful moment because I think it makes some bigger things way more palatable, and it’s a heartwarming moment, I think.


Yes, for sure.

But when you take it out of context, it does just become a joke, and so I, personally, just so you know, I didn’t want that in the trailer.



Oh, really?

I felt it robbed it of its importance. You know, but I’m glad that you picked up on it because when you’re writing something like that, you don’t know whether people are going to get it, and I didn’t want it to just come across as a joke at Link’s expense. It’s trying to say much more than that.

Yeah, and the characters end up accepting him with that name, and it doesn’t become a plot point. That just ends up being his name.

Exactly. It was important for Lionel’s character, too, because you can see him struggling with it, but the fact is he’s trying to be a better person. You’ve got this character who is pretty flawed, he’s pretty self-obsessed, but you see him working through it, and trying to improve himself. And I think that’s wonderful to watch.





Yeah, and at the end of the day, it really feels like Missing Link is about Lionel. His growth as an accepting person, an empathetic person.

Yeah, definitely. And you said it. It’s about Lionel finding some empathy.




What I love about stop-motion and animation, in general, is that you have to voice cast so early on in the production before you really even get to work on the puppetry. I guess you have the designs, and then you cast voices to those designs, but in grabbing Zach Galifianakis, Zoe Saldana, and Hugh Jackman you’re setting the course for the animation process.



Yeah. You do have designs, but they’re not all been finalized at that point because it is so early in the process. When these guys come into record, all they have is themselves in a booth with a script in front of them. There’s not much else. It is important to record the voices at the start because there’s a reason that you get good actors for these things. It’s not just for a celebrity name. You’re hiring them because they are really good actors, and they bring so much more to a part. To me, what’s thrilling is when a character who has existed in my head for years suddenly starts evolving into something else. You’ve got Hugh Jackman or Zoe Saldana in the booth, and they’re adding a perspective to it that’s their own, and suddenly this character starts to change and starts to become more complex. And, actually, oftentimes when I’m recording them, I’m rewriting the characters because they might try something from a slightly different point of view that is better.

That’s very rewarding when we see this character become real, just starts to live and breathe in front of you. It could’ve been very easy to make Link just like a buffoon, just like a butt of a joke. He’s this big apeman in a suit, and I knew it had to be more than that, and I think what drew me to Zach is that his humor has a certain vulnerability to it. An awkwardness that comes from a sense of displacement and that was perfect for Link. He’s this character who steps out into the wide world that he’s never encountered before. He is a little awkward, and that was so great that Zach could do. It gave the characters such warmth. I defy anyone not to want Link as their friend.

I certainly want action figures of Link. I’m desperate for those.

Oh, me, too.

So get on that. Get those guys making those.

Okay. Will do. [Laughter]

*I agree about the name SUSAN as intended by the director. It makes more sense, when you see the movie and becomes more acquainted with the character.

*I also thought Sir Lionel did undergo his own personal transformation.


Jo

[jo]

Disappointing box office receipts, despite glowing reviews.

From The Hollywood Reporter --

Missing Link is faltering in its domestic launch, grossing $1.6 million on Friday for a projected $6 million weekend, the lowest start ever for stop-motion production company Laika.

From Annapurna Pictures, the Victorian era-set story is voiced by Hugh Jackman, Zach Galifianakis and Zoe Saldana. Missing Link earned glowing reviews, while audiences gave it a B+ CinemaScore.

[jo]

Have you seen the movie yet? Did you catch the Barnum joke

SPOILER: Click to show

Sir Lionel's new adventure when he comes back to London with his valet, Mr. Link, was to verify the truth about the Fiji Mermaid

Laughed out so loud - I wonder if Hugh knew about it all along


Jo

[jo]

Update on predicted box office results (including demos distribution) from Deadline.com --

The UA released Missing Link is looking at an estimated $5.6M, the lowest opening ever for a Laika production out of its five theatrical releases; Focus Features’ Kubo and the Two Strings from 2016 repped a prior low opening of $12.6M. Stop motion animation is increasingly not an easy sell in this CGI era, plus this movie was sold younger than the regular hipster Laika pic, so it’s likely not pulling in the brand’s enthusiasts en masse. Kids under-repped 43% of the audience, followed by 42% general audience and 15% parents. Men over 25, who rep a third of the audience, love the pic the most on PostTrak at 81% positive and a 63% definite recommend. Missing Link gets a B+ CinemaScore like Laika’s Boxtrolls and Paranorma.

It is adult-skewing in appeal and in terms of audience approval. Maybe they should refocus those TV spots or even the trailers ( where the movie has not opened).

Jo

[carouselkathy]

Saw it yesterday and thought it is too sophisticated for young kids. The jokes were geared more toward an older audience. I laughed a lot, but don't think young ones will get the jokes. Some of the action is intense. I really liked it, and hope the momentum will increase.

[jo]

In brief --

The kind of animation movie which is a pleasure to watch! Beautiful imagery, adult-skewing but kid-friendly theme of human connection, excellent vocal talent, an exciting sense of adventure & keen sense of humor! Great characters in Sir Lionel & Susan! It would be great to see them in a sequel!

Luv the Barnum joke. Had Hugh( aka Sir Lionel) chortling with glee

Jo

[jo]

[jo]

A lot of comments from fans on social media and other film blogs --

*For a very wide release - there was hardly any TV spots. Poor marketing!

*Too much reliance on cost-friendly social media ( Jo's note: How many very young kids would see them?)

*Interviews were more on social media than main media.

*Trailer a bit misleading; trailers not very appealing.



Hope there is still time to change some of the above mis-steps?


Jo

[jo]

[jo]

[jo]

We know his story, we have seen all those images...but it is always great to relive Hugh Jackman's road to fame!


From the publicity portfolio of MISSING LINK --


www.imdb.com/list/ls025720609/videoplayer/vi3995647257?ref_=vi_prev_btn


A bit of erratum -- EGOT refers to EMMY-GRAMMY-OSCAR-TONY, not a GLOBE for the G.


Jo

[jo]

Now that it is on home video release --

Hugh has always been involved in animation movies that have excellent stories or lessons to tell.

[jo]

[jo]

Is the reason for the Guild screening on October 19 because MISSING LINK is being submitted for Oscar consideration?

[jo]

It is confirmed that MISSING LINK has been submitted for OSCAR consideration.


www.hollywoodreporter.com/behind-screen/oscars-32-animated-features-submitted-lion-king-isnt-them-1248200


It has been certified FRESH at Rotten Tomatoes with an average rating of 89%, coming from 149 submissions.

[jo]

Missing Link is on the short list of possible Oscar nominees for Best Animated Feature.

GoldDerby predictors think it has an excellent chance to win an Oscar --

www.goldderby.com/article/2019/missing-link-laika-best-animated-feature-oscar-predictions/


Indiewire also lists it as a frontrunner for an Oscar --

www.indiewire.com/feature/oscars-2020-best-animated-feature-predictions-1202164406/



It also tied with Frozen 2 for most number of nominations for the ANNIE AWARDS ( for animation) --

www.indiewire.com/2019/12/annie-awards-nominations-disney-frozen-2-laika-missing-link-oscars-animated-feature-1202193479/



Jo

[mamaleh]

Congrats to MISSING LINK, winner of the 2020 Golden Globe for Best Animated Movie!

Ellen

[jo]

Yay!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[jo]

Hey, maybe an Oscar is also forthcoming

[jo]

Per report of BWW ---

Best Motion Picture - Animated

Frozen 2
How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World
Missing Link **Winner**
Toy Story 4
Lion King

Too bad they did not recognize Hugh and Zach for their voiceover work!


Also, Congrats to Russell Crowe for his win --

Best Performance by an Actor in a Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television

Russell Crowe, The Loudest Voice **Winner**
Jared Harris, Chernobyl
Sam Rockwell, Fosse/Verdon
Christopher Abbott, Catch 22
Sacha Baron Cohen, The Spy