Chris Sanders, director and screenwriter of DreamWorks Animation’s praised The Wild Robot, just received his fourth career Oscar nomination for Best Animated Feature for the film, after previous nominations for Lilo & Stitch, How to Train Your Dragon and The Croods. The Wild Robot in fact is this year’s most nominated animated feature with noms also for Best Sound and for Kris Bowers’ music score.
But Sanders’ storied career, which started out working on Jim Henson’s Muppet Babies, stretches back to some remarkable years from 1988-2007 at Disney, where he did significant work on classics like Beauty and the Beast (the first animated film to be nominated for the Best Picture Oscar), Aladdin, The Lion King, Mulan and Lilo & Stitch.
For the latter, he was director and also the voice of Stitch, a job as he explains in this week’s edition of my Deadline video series Behind the Lens. It came about quite accidentally and now has stretched through three sequels, three TV series, and the new live-action film version as well as many live appearances as the beloved character.
Sanders talks about finding a new visual look for Wild Robot, one whose origins go all the way back to an early Disney film, Bambi. We also talk about adapting the Peter Brown book, and whether he plans to make more movies from the other books in the series, as well as his opinions on the upcoming live-action versions not just of Lilo & Stitch but also Universal’s big summer release of How to Train Your Dragon, which has been directed by Dean DeBois who co-directed the original animated film with Sanders. He also talks about his experience making his own live-action film, 2020’s The Call of the Wild, and the experience of directing Harrison Ford in it.
To watch our conversation and go “behind the lens” with Chris Sanders, watch the video above.
Join me every Monday during Oscar season for another episode of Behind the Lens.