The Sea Beast Movie Interviews!

If you’re looking for a fun new movie that the family will enjoy, The Sea Beast needs to be on your radar. Grab your movie snacks, pop your popcorn, and get ready to fall in love with the characters in this movie. While I had the chance to have a sneak peek and talk to some of the cast, you’ll need to set your calendars for the debut on Netflix, happening on July 8th.

And trust me on this one – it’s a GREAT movie that you’re going to love. It’s light, it’s fun, it’s great animation, and of course, there are a few lessons to be learned along the way.

The Sea Beast Movie – On Netflix July 8th

Since this is an animated movie, it’s literally mesmerizing the entire time. I loved seeing how the scenes were created and flowed perfectly from one to the next.

I was asked to be a part of the panel to preview and then ask some follow-up questions as well. It was such an honor and I had so much fun!

One of the biggest things that we loved about the movie was the sea creatures. We were able to sit and talk one on one with Joshua Beveridge (the head of character animation) and pick his brain a bit, too! (These aren’t copied or written directly below – they’re just a snippet

Q:Where did you get the inspiration for the sea creatures?

A: Beast-to-beast creation was different. We wanted to be sure that they were creatures – and make them fantasy at the same time.

Anything that we could draw from, we did. So we looked at lots of sea creatures. Video references – a lot! If you can imagine it, there’s an animal underwater and we drew from that!

Q:How long did it take you to make and create a scene?

It’s really hard to figure out the timeframe for a specific scene but it’s safe to say that there were 1 1/2 years of working on the animations to create the movie.

I also asked him what his favorite scene was from the movie…but I’m not giving away any spoilers about that right now! (You have to tune in when it releases and make your own mind up!)

Below is the question and direct answers that I received from the directors (Jed Schlanger & Chris Williams) of “The Sea Beast”.

Q: Before developing the characters, did you have a cast in mind?”

Jed Schlanger:

Chris really wrote the script, so he really had like this world in his head that he sort of put out onto paper and boards and everything, and he really sort of like started the ball rolling with sort of creating them in this sort of ethereal imaginative way.

And then a lot of what we do to cast is think about like, what’s that voice, what’s that person that kind of starts to fit in, but can still bring something? So I think maybe Chris, you might have had like one person in mind in terms of Captain Crow, but everybody else, it was more of us kind of understanding our character and then going after people we thought really would be able to represent them and frankly, add to them and make them even better and stronger.

Chris Williams:

Yeah. It’s a good question because sometimes that is a great method is to have particular voices in your head as you’re writing. In this case, I had certainly sort of types in mind, but I didn’t have any particular actors when the script was first being developed.

But as I alluded to, the story process is an ever-evolving process. And so once we started clicking into our actors… I mean, in my mind, I saw once I clicked into Jared Harris as being the perfect person to play Captain Crow, then we had that as an ingredient for further story evolution because the story does really evolve quite a bit.

Hopefully, if things are going as they should, you’re always challenging the story you have and always trying to make it better. So it’s a years-long process so we had at a certain point cast our actors and they were then informing and making more specific the story and the writing.

The Sea Beast Movie – My Thoughts

I think that this movie is a MUST-SEE. Not only is it full of adventure and action, but it’s really really funny, too. This may be releasing on July 8th, but go ahead and prepare yourselves because the kids (and you!) are going to want to watch it over and over again.

It’s the perfect way to take a break from the stresses of the day and snuggle up on the couch for a super fun family movie night!