Tagline: Fairytale endings aren’t the way they use to be.
Inspired by the most beloved of fables, the animated feature Happily N’Ever After is a satirical retelling of the classic story of Cinderella. Once upon a time in Fairy Tale Land, the age-old balance between good and evil has been thrown out of whack. Frieda, Cinderella’s power-mad stepmother (voiced by Sigourney Weaver), has formed an unholy alliance of evil to take on the good guys.
With her own fairy tale spinning wildly out of control, Cinderella (a/k/a Ella – voiced by Sarah Michelle Gellar) is forced to shed her damsel-in-distress trappings in order to seize control of her own destiny and lead the resistance without her Prince Charming (Patrick Warburton). In a world of happy endings gone wrong, the race for control of the kingdom is on, with the fate of the venerable storyline ‘Happily N’Ever After’ hanging in the balance.
About the Production
The world of fairy tales has always been a place where good prevails over evil. Cinderella, for all of her suffering at the hands of her Stepmother, finds herself marrying the Prince; and Sleeping Beauty, following days of slumber brought on by an evil fairy, is awakened with a kiss by her true love.
But what would happen if these familiar tales ended differently and happy endings weren’t guaranteed? Lionsgate’s animated feature, Happily N’Ever After, offers a funny, highly original answer. What begins as a re-telling of the Cinderella story goes entertainingly awry when Frieda, the evil stepmother, gains behind-the-scenes control of her own story, as well as every other fairy tale in Fairy Tale Land.
When the young Cinderella-like heroine Ella realizes her destined love affair with the Prince is in serious jeopardy, she embarks on an unpredictable journey of self-discovery – and arrives at a new ending she never could have imagined.
“What we wanted to do with Happily N’Ever After was set up the expectation that our story was going to be played out as a traditional, classic fairy tale, and then tell it in a very different way,” says producer John H. Williams, whose previous credits include SHREK and SHREK 2. “We started from a very foundational log line, which was: ‘The Wizard’s away on vacation and the assistants are left in charge, and Cinderella’s delusionally focused on a prince that isn’t really the right object of her affection.’ That gave us the driving through-line for the movie.”
“I think audiences will love seeing these fairy tales that they know so well and watch them get turned inside out in such a delightful, funny way,” says actress Sigourney Weaver, the voice of Frieda.
“It’s quite cathartic to see what happens when all the darker figures start running things. They turn out to be very human, too, and I think that’s refreshing. It’s a very original, contemporary story in its own unique way.”
George Carlin, who provides the voice of the Wizard, found that Happily N’Ever After’s mischievous sense of humor shares similarities with his own acclaimed stand-up comedy. “I like it when the expected turns into the unexpected,” he says. “My comedy is all about overturning the applecart. Some of it’s a little more edgy than this project, but it’s all about disturbing the order of things, which is a great switch.”
While developing the story for Happily N’Ever After, screenwriter Rob Moreland incorporated elements from the Grimm Brothers’ classic fairy tales, which he found to have a visceral power all their own. “Fairy tales give us all the basic human archetypes we find in movies and classic stories,” says Moreland. “But the really amazing thing about the Grimm Brothers is that they didn’t just write those tales from their imaginations. They gathered them. They talked to thousands of people over their lifetimes. I think that’s part of the reason the stories have such a powerful appeal to this day. Because generation after generation of people had been telling these tales until the Grimm Brothers did us the favor of writing them down so brilliantly.”
Much like Moreland does in Happily N’Ever After, the Grimm Brothers often changed the endings of their own fairy tales. They heard many different versions of the same story over the course of their lifetimes, which often led to editorial changes. Many of the most popular stories, like that of Cinderella, are much darker than most of today’s audiences realize. “We’re all used to a very gentle kind of Cinderella. That’s our cultural myth,” says Moreland. “But if you go back to the original story, those stepsisters literally cut off their heels in order to get their feet into the glass slipper. There are a lot of surprises there, and I think our film captures that spirit of surprise and the twist on the familiar.”
Once Moreland finished the script, the producers and director Paul J. Bolger succeeded in attracting a talented group of actors to the provide the character voices. Sarah Michelle Gellar accepted the role of Ella, the Cinderella-like heroine who is misguidedly in love with the preening, self-involved Prince; while Gellar’s husband, Freddy Prinze, Jr., was cast as Rick, the Prince’s beleaguered servant who is secretly in love with Ella.
“The great thing about Rick is that he’s the anti-hero. He tries to fly under the radar, and is very reluctant to fight the good fight,” says Prinze, Jr. “But he has these leadership qualities, and when push comes to shove he makes the right decision.”
For Prinze, Jr., working with his wife had its advantages, especially during the scenes in which Ella and Rick are at odds. “We had a lot of fun in those scenes because Sarah and I know the tricks that we’ve played on each other, and we know when it’s time to give the other a hard time,” he says. “Obviously we have a natural chemistry and hopefully that translated to our work!”
For most members of the cast, doing voice work for HAPPILY N’EVER AFTER was a welcome reprieve from traditional film acting. “Well, first of all, you don’t have to get dressed up,” says Carlin. “It’s like the years I was in radio: it feels good not to have to present yourself. And I enjoy the challenge of working with a director behind the glass.”
“There are restrictions in the real world,” adds Prinze, Jr. “But in animation, you just get to go crazy. You can try anything you want, and they encourage you to try anything you want.” Weaver, who had never worked on a feature-length animated film before, found the process to be markedly different from the traditional film process. “One of the things that I think is surprising is that you’re not on a sound stage with the other actors,” says the actress. “You’re alone in a booth. Maybe you see a couple of cartoons of what you might look like. But otherwise you kind of have to just wing it.”
Although Weaver admits that she’s been offered a number of “wicked queen” roles over the course of her career, the role of Frieda was the first one that interested her. “Most of those parts are so relentlessly, irredeemably wicked,” she says. “But there’s something really human about Frieda that I related to. She’s tired of doing the same story again and again. So when she gets the opportunity to make things go a different way, she seizes control. And I found it really exhilarating to see her have fun. She has this one day where she gets to create havoc and she really goes for it.”
Director Paul J. Bolger videotaped the voice sessions, and in some cases, he used the footage as reference for the animated characters. “Sarah Michelle Gellar was used quite a bit for Ella: the way she moved, some of her facial expressions,” he says. “We never copied anything exactly, but sometimes the actor’s faces provided us with a launching point.”
With the vocal performances finished, Bolger and his animation team were faced with the daunting task of designing over a hundred different characters, twenty of which were human. Says executive producer Rainer Soehnlein, “It’s the first time that I know of that a movie has taken on that kind of challenge. We had to tread the fine line between creating characters that were as realistic and human as possible, yet still stylistically unique and cartoon-like.”
“The most important thing for me was the personality of the characters, not just the look,” adds Bolger. “What do they think about, how do they react, how do they walk, how do they talk? Sometimes we turned to real life figures. For instance, we wanted Ella to have short hair and an appealing set of mannerisms, so we used Audrey Hepburn as a model.”
With the help of production designer Deane Taylor, Bolger and his animation team worked hard to develop a unique and cohesive look for the animation. Citing the Art Nouveau/Modernist architect Antoni Gaudi as one of many sources of inspiration, Bolger decided there would be no straight lines in the movie. “Deane and I decided that the feel of the world would be like a theme park. There’s a handmade quality about this world, in the lighting, the staging, everything,” he says. “The same for the characters. They’re slightly caricatured. It’s very organic and very rooted in classic fairy tale book illustration.”
Says Deane Taylor, “We’ve got elements of everything in there from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari to some of the modern classics. All the colors are rich, almost edible. They’re very much part of the cinematic choreography.”
“A lot of the CGI movies that we see tend to have an over-animated feel,” adds animation director Dina Athanassiou. “Happily N’Ever After has a more classic look. Our approach was to create very clear, direct performances. There are some nice, subtle performances from Frieda and Rick and Ella. Broader characters like the Prince we made more cartoony. Then you have Munk and Mambo, and the dwarves, and the witches, who are even broader still, and lend themselves more to the Warner Brothers/MGM style of animation from the 1930s and 40s.”
Happily N’Ever After began life as a 2D feature film project, with 97 characters and 44 locations. But as production began, the 3D CGI revolution had taken over the marketplace and it quickly became clear that major markets, from Europe to Asia to the U.S., were only considering 3D films for theatrical release. At the eleventh hour, the producers refinanced the film, and re-envisioned it as a 3D, fully computer-animated movie.
Due to the international distribution deals already in place, the 3D mandate required Berliner Film Companie, the production company, to establish a fully functioning CGI production pipeline from the ground up while the film was in production – a task never previously undertaken. In addition to Mental Images, the primary Berlin-based animation studio, BFC enlisted the services of several smaller animation studios, one in Australia and five in Canada. The Berlin headquarters became the hub of a creative network, working a 22-hour workday to direct and integrate work across three continents. As a result of this monumental effort, the total production time from the creation of the first models to the delivery of the answer print was a mere 15 months, unheard of for a first-class computer animated movie.
With Happily N’Ever After now awaiting theatrical release, the filmmakers are looking to reactions from general audiences. “There’s a fantastic appetite among families for this kind of film,” says Williams. “General audiences are one of the most enthusiastic when it comes to Hollywood fare, so we’re pleased to be offering this to them.”
Adds co-producer J. Chad Hammes, “Happily N’Ever After show, through stories that we’re all familiar with, that we don’t have to follow traditional paths, that happy endings can come about when we follow our desires and find our own way. It’s a positive message that I hope with resonate with younger audiences.”
Production notes provided by Lionsgate Films.
Happily N’Ever After
Starring: Sigourney Weaver, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Freddie Prinze Jr., George Carlin, Michael McShane, Andy Dick, Patrick Warburton
Directed by: Paul J. Bolger
Screenplay by: Robert Moreland
Release Date: January 5th, 2007
MPAA Rating: PG for some mild action and rude humor.
Studio: Lionsgate Films
Box Office Totals
Domestic: $15,589,393 (40.9%)
Foreign: $22,495,398 (59.1%)
Total: $38,084,791 (Worldwide)