“Slumberland” is here.
But instead of putting you to sleep, “Slumberland” will delight you with its story of a young girl named Nemo (Marlow Barkley), who, after suffering the tragic loss of her father (Kyle Chandler), begins to slip into a fantasy realm. when she dreams. This is where she teams up with the mischievous Flip (Jason Momoa) and together they embark on a series of daring adventures through various dream realms (including one where everyone is made up of flowers). Based, in part, on Winsor McCay’s “Little Nemo” comic strip, “Slumberland” is an imaginative and fun game.
Bringing all that fantasy to life is director Francis Lawrence, who fully admits his filmography is mostly full of dystopian stories like “I Am Legend,” three “Hunger Games” movies, and Jennifer’s highly R-rated spy thriller. Lawrence “Red Sparrow”. ”
TheWrap talked to the filmmaker about bringing these fantasy worlds to life, returning to the world of “The Hunger Games” with the upcoming “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” (based on Suzanne Collins’ previous novel) and all what happened in the aftermath of “Red Sparrow”.
What brought you to this project?
I think what drew me to it in the first place was just that it was so different from anything I had done before. Almost everything I had done was pretty dark, most of it pretty dystopian. And, you know, just critiquing my own work, honestly, it didn’t have much joy or levity. And I was like, I’m really ready to try to do something with a little more joy and a little more levity but it still has the things I love – building a world and making a visual movie. And when I was working on “See” with Jason, the producers gave me the script that I did “Red Sparrow” and “See” with and I absolutely loved it. But it was something that had already started the development process.
And it was inspired by material from Winsor McCay, which is an early 1900s comic strip. But not strictly adapted from that and certainly not adapted from the Chris Columbus animated movie at all. What we’ve been trying to do is really do a more contemporary take on this idea of Nemo and Flip traveling through dreams. And then trying to really come up with, through some mathematical foundation, some idea of why the movie exists. And then the writer just found this great way to deal with that loss and seek to be reunited and that brought up the thematic idea of resilience and dealing with grief and we just ran from there.
Can we talk about your Flip design?
I didn’t have much knowledge of the original source material, so I got a fresh start on Flip. I knew I wanted Jason to play the role, because I knew that in person he had a lot of the elements needed to play a character like this. And it would also be fun for him to do something different and for the world to see him do different kinds of things. Without revealing too much who this person is in the real world and why certain choices would have been made. And working a little bit with Jason and working a lot with my costume designer Trish Summerville, who I work with all the time, we ended up creating an idea of what he looks like. And then the big thing was once we got the suit on Jason for the first time it really started to bring in the physique like the way he walks and the way he moves and the way he takes his belly, all that stuff.
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Can we talk about dream worlds? Was there a world you couldn’t make?
There was another, there was another world that I really loved that didn’t really get cut but it was swapped out and it was a world that was set in the Wild West that I really loved. If we ever get to do another one, I’ll try to review and figure out how to do the Wild West one again, because it was really smart.
It was very early in the development of this film for me and I wanted to make sure that we avoided the kind of “Alice in Wonderland” wild and tart version of dreams. Because it’s too easy. There are no parameters. For me, what was important was who the character of the dreamer was, like, Who is the person having the dream? What is the story? Even though it’s kind of a secret of what’s happening in the dream… And let’s build from there. It feels, although fantastic, grounded, tangible, and just has parameters so that every choice in a dream makes sense. These decisions were important to me compared to just random forests of giant mushrooms and psychedelic colors.
Are you considering other “Slumberland” films?
I would like. Every time we make a movie and we have fun and we’re happy with it, you think, Oh, it would be nice to make another one. I would love to do another one. But we would just have to wait and see. Who knows? Ideally families watch the movie and like the movie and we can make another one. And if we get there, we have the ideas, but if we don’t, then, you know, let’s move on.
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Speaking of sequels you weren’t able to make, can you talk about the sequel to “Red Sparrow?”
We already had another idea in mind. Because there are other books that Jason Matthews has written and we loved doing them and so we had another idea in mind, waiting. And then it was one of those times. Nobody saw him in the theatre. Everyone I know who has seen it has seen it on an airplane, which is of no use to me. So you’re like, Alright, well, no “Red Sparrow 2”.
What can you say about the new “Hunger Games?”
I had spent a lot of time on the original films. I’ve done three over the course of I don’t know, four or five years or something and had a blast, absolutely loved it. But I was definitely ready to move on. But then “Red Sparrow” and “See” and “Slumberland”. And it was right before the pandemic actually where Suzanne called me and the producer and said she was almost done with her book. And she let us read it and I was really excited about it. And we worked on the draft during the pandemic while I was working on “Slumberland,” and then I just got back from Berlin yesterday. We just finished Saturday. And it was great. We have an amazing cast. It’s both very different and very fresh, but it also really feels like a “Hunger Games” movie, but it’s a movie that really excites me.
“Slumberland” is streaming on Netflix right now.
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