Netflix drops teaser for animated film ‘Spellbound’

Netflix and Skydance Animation have dropped the teaser trailer for Spellbound, an animated movie which is described as an original fairy tale take on a modern story.

The movie follows the story of Ellian, a girl (voiced by Rachel Zegler) who squares off with her mother and father, the king and queen of Lumbria who have been transformed by a mysterious spell into monsters. The film handles delicate subjects with a lot of beautiful imagery, music, and an allegorical approach to real-life issues that kids sometimes face, said Zelger.

According to director Vicky Jenson who has previously worked on Shrek, “If we start with the familiar — the kingdom, a princess, a king, a queen, and a spell — we could use that to express the story of this family. For me, the story is even more universal than the specifics of this family dynamic. For me, it speaks to kids and their parents, to the kind of alienation that can happen as we grow up, and the steps we have to make toward each other to weather it together and come through the other side with better understanding.”

As the film is a modern take on the fairytale genre, its new trailer showcases a few similarities to the modern world, from a rideshare frog to a wand that functions like a car-key fob. “Finding the allegory, finding the fairy-tale paradigm, the shape of it, I think is what was a real breakthrough for us,” Jenson added.

Zegler, who voices the lead character Ellian, expressed, “Taking on this job was so cool for my inner child. I was obsessed with so many animated films as a child, including Beauty and the Beast, which had such a gorgeous, sweeping score by Alan Menken, who did the music for our film. Films like these made me fall in love with musical theatre, which ended up changing my life entirely.”

“She can belt with the best of them, but really there’s that same vulnerability, and groundedness, and humanity to her voice as well. She’s just amazing,” the director said about Zegler’s performance.

Ellian’s parents are voiced by Oscar winners Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem. “He [Bardem] just would come straight from the set of Dune: Part Two,” Jenson said of Bardem’s role in the film. “A lot of the animal noises, some of the monster dad sounds, he definitely created. He played around with wolf growls and stuff and incorporated that into his laugh.”

Zegler added “It’s really different to perform an entire movie from a recording booth — you have to capture every aspect of an emotional performance from behind a mic, and no one will be able to see your face at the end of the day. You place your performance into the hands of many talented animators who totally take it to the next level.”

The supporting cast of the film includes John Lithgow, Jenifer Lewis, Nathan Lane, and Tituss Burgess, featuring music and lyrics from Menken (Beauty and the Beast) and Glenn Slater (Tangled). “We did a music retreat very early on when we hit on our initial fairy-tale idea,” the director said.

Spellbound is coming to Netflix on 22 November.