Over the past several years, I’ve been following the saga of Animal Crackers, a new all-star animated film that’s finally being released this Friday July 24th. Directors Tony Bancroft and Scott Christian Sava discuss making the fun feature, assembling the tremendous cast, asking for special permission from the band Queen… and how Netflix came-in for the distribution save.

Jackson Murphy: In May 2017, I interviewed Gilbert Gottfried. He came to near where I live to do his comedy show. I asked him about his voice role in this movie, and I got to see him after the show and gave him a box of Animal Crackers. He said to me (basically): ‘I came in. I did my voice performance. I have no idea what’s happening with the movie.’ Take me from mid-2017 to where we are now.

Scott Christian Sava: First of all, Gilbert was a dream to work with. He was amazing. Tony got to do Iago with him.

Tony Bancroft: Yeah, we go way back to Disney’s Aladdin. That’s when I first met him and worked with him.

SCS: He was so fun. He joked a lot about the fact that we were trying to get him to play an Italian. We gave him some weird stuff to say, but he really helped change that character.

TB: The whole movie takes place in a circus, so a lot of the villains and the henchmen of the villains are all acts in the circus. So Gilbert plays Mario Zucchini who’s this stunt driver. I love the character design. He’s really short on this huge motorcycle. And he’s very skilled on it. And then when you throw in Gilbert Gottfried, come on!

SCS: And we recorded that in early 2015 in New York.

TB: Here’s the thing, Jackson, and this is going more directly to your question: they always say there are three elements to making an independent animated movie that are hard. Any two of them are crippling, usually, and then destroy your movie altogether. But they are: first, getting an investment, which was fairly easy. That’s usually the hardest thing. The second thing is making the production. You have to put together a team of all these great artists – usually an international team. A lot of things could go wrong along the way or you could run out of money. Happened, had some bumps and bruises along the way, but overall it went well.

Distribution is the third thing: having it be able to get out into the marketplace is so key. Usually that’s the easiest part because usually you have a movie. Especially with us: we had a movie that was done in 2017. When you met Gilbert Gottfried, he didn’t know what was going on because WE didn’t know what was going on. We were in this world of, “This doesn’t make sense.” All-star cast, great animation, fun family film: why isn’t this happening? The short of it is we went through all kinds of trials going with smaller independents. Bigger distribution companies gave us really lousy deals. And the smaller independent distribution companies went out of business, one of them sued us. It was a nightmare for three long years. I don’t think Scott has had a good night’s sleep in three years.

SCS: We thought getting 1 and 2 done meant 3 was automatic, and it wasn’t. The larger studios wanted to own the film completely, which didn’t favor our investors. And the smaller studios that gave us favorable deals couldn’t raise the money to market the film properly and in doing so, they wound up going bankrupt. Before the cast came on, we were thinking it was just gonna be a small, direct to DVD film. But when the cast kept getting bigger and bigger.

TB: They kept saying “Yes”. We had a Wish List, and all of our Wish List came true. It was incredible!

JM: But with this Netflix deal happening, was it very recently, and what was that day like for you guys when Netflix… one of the biggest places right now to have your movie be shown… said “Yes! We are in on Animal Crackers?

SCS: It was amazing. After everything we’d been through, it was a white knight… Gandalf at the last hour in white saving the day. It really was magical. But also (this was at the beginning of the year), we had no idea what the landscape was gonna be. I keep joking with Tony and saying, “Could you imagine if it wasn’t Netflix who saved us and it was another studio and we were gonna release the film theatrically this summer?” It would’ve been another tragedy. We feel like it all worked out for the best. We can’t thank them enough, and they’ve been so supportive of us as creators. All the fans who have been waiting to see it for the past six years can now see it.

JM: When it comes to Emily Blunt & John Krasinski: I’ve met Emily and have spent time with her on several occasions. She is absolutely lovely. Did you always know you wanted to be the husband and wife main characters in this film?

TB: No!

JM: What?!

SCS: That is a funny story, and I will forever be humiliated for this. I was a nobody. But one day, magically, Ian McKellen said “Yes”. And when he did, it opened the flood gates. Sylvester Stallone and Danny DeVito… the whole cast filled-up except for the two leads, Owen and Zoe. We looked around… and nothing was right. And Jamie Thomason our Casting Director said, “I’m gonna run a name by you: John Krasinski.” I said, “I’ve never heard of him.” He says, “Do you know him from The Office?” This is 2014. Never heard of him. “He says, “He’s really funny.” And I said, “Okay, I’ll trust you.”

For the female lead, he picked Kaley Cuoco. I said, “Never heard of her.” “The Big Bang Theory?” “Never seen it.” “Well, that’s your two leads.” “Okay.” So at the beginning of 2015, I fly out to Nashville. Tony’s there. John Krasinski’s there. We meet him. He’s great. Kaley Cuoco doesn’t show up. We record. Next day we did Raven-Symone and Danny DeVito. Everything went good. I go home. A couple weeks later: next session. I come out. John’s there. Kaley’s not there. Third time I come out: John’s there, Kaley’s not there. And we had to let her go.

TB: Let me just say… Kaley Cuoco’s agent was playing a lot of games and wanting more money.

SCS: It’s not her fault.

TB: What we heard was she very pleasantly in love with the script and wanted to do the part.

SCS: So I was pretty upset and I was in the booth with John waiting for everything to get set up. And John just off-hand making chit-chat says, “Hey, I just wanted to let you know: my wife absolutely loved the script. She thought it was adorable” and kept talking on and on. I was genuinely flattered and said, “Thank you.” After that, I walked out. I didn’t know who he was married to because I didn’t know who he was.

TB: Again: Scott did little to no research. The rest of us are going, “Oh my gosh. He’s talking about Emily Blunt.”

SCS: Tony and Jamie are in the sound booth listening to this conversation, and Jamie comes running out and jumps out in front of John and says, “Would your wife be interested in being in the movie?” And I’m looking around going, “What?” I get shushed. And John goes, “Yeah. Sure.” He picks up his phone and goes, “Hey babe, you wanna be in the movie?” A couple minutes later…

TB: He texts her right in the session and we do a couple lines. And right after he says, “I got a text from my wife. She’d love to do it.” And we’re celebrating. And Scott’s going, “Wait, but who did we hire?”

JM: Wow. That’s amazing. You listen to the two of them… did they end-up coming in together and doing their lines together?

TB: Yeah. Every single time.

SCS: They were magical together. We had to go back and re-storyboard most of the film because of them – because of their playfulness and their dialogue… they were making each other laugh every other line. They were adding new lines. They were singing songs.

TB: And they had this great short-hand. In between takes they would go, “Oh, you do this high and I’ll go low.” “Let’s do a little banter here.”

JM: You can tell they’re so natural listening to them. It’s one of the best decisions you guys made.

SCS: I had nothing to do with this whatsoever!

TB: And it was the easiest casting in the history of animation, probably.

SCS: And it was their first film together [this was done before they filmed A Quiet Place].

JM: Which cast member surprised you the most?

TB: I wanna say Stallone amazed me that he took on the part. He plays a guy who’s shot of the cannon. He only says his name [Bulletman] over and over again. And we thought, ‘Oh, this isn’t very challenging for him. All he says is Bulletman throughout the movie.’ (There is a little something extra at the end.) And he was so thrilled to come in. So pleasant, so into it. He went through every single emotion of how you could say his name. We had everything in an hour.

SCS: He did it with a smile on his face and was so joyful. Everybody warned us: he’s gonna have an entourage, he’s gonna be distant. He came in with a cup of coffee and said, “Call me Sly” and just hung out.

JM: That’s so cool. At one point in the movie you have a montage to Freddie Mercury’s “Don’t Stop Me Now”. This movie was made before Bohemian Rhapsody came out and Rami Malek won the Oscar – and this resurgence of Freddie Mercury. You do with this song what Katy Perry’s “Firework” in Madagascar 3 does. How did you know to incorporate some Freddie Mercury in this?

SCS: The team in Spain was messing around and they picked the song and it was perfect.

TB: But we thought we’ll never get that Queen song. But Scott has a very anti-Hollywood way about him. If somebody says, “No”, that’s usually a challenge for him.

SCS: It never hurts to ask. The initial quote was three times our entire music budget for all of the songs. We were told by our music supervisor, “Unless you find a few extra hundred thousand dollars, you’re not gonna be able to do it.” And I said, “Well, can we send them the movie? [We were still in storyboards but had some stuff animated.] Can we send Brian May and Roger Taylor the movie?” He reached out and they said, “Okay.” They watched it with their family, and a few weeks later we got the call saying, “Okay you can have it within your budget.” It was an 80% discount just so we could get the song in our film.

TB: That’s the overriding story you’ll hear from us about the making of Animal Crackers. There were just these little miracles that would happen constantly. Because there was so much heart fueling this production that started with Scott and his family. This is his baby. This is one of those independent love stories where he poured his heart and soul into this. All of us just wanted to support that. Scott and his wife Donna would tell [the actors]: ‘We’ve put our whole life saving into this and mortgaged the house. We’re all in on this. This is a passion play’ And people would fall in love with the story and go, ‘Okay. We’re in.’

JM: There are so many layers to this story. It’s unbelievable. I think families are really gonna get into this because I remember going to the circus when I was younger and seeing the animals. And Owen (Krasinski’s character) eats the Animal Crackers and he becomes those animals. How was it deciding which animals at which times?

SCS: I think it was all based on what was the funniest impact. That was always what we were looking for: what was visually funny. It was so fun seeing them come to life: porcupines, flamingos, rhinoceros, hamsters – stuff that isn’t in a normal box of Animal Crackers. It was pure creative bliss. Whatever felt like would enhance the film: we would do it.

JM: So guys, are you getting Animal Crackers for life? Are they sending you the boxes?

TB: I know! We should, right?

SCS: Animal Crackers is such a generic term, like pizza or hamburgers. We’ve spoken to Nabisco, but the movie is just based off of the book I wrote.

TB: My mom just bought a big jar of Animal Crackers. I don’t know where she found it [maybe Amazon]. And she says, “I’m gonna have an Animal Cracker every day until your movie comes out.”

JM: I think a lot of people are gonna be surprised that this is based on a book and not just the cookie that we see. Scott, did one day you just pick up the cookies and go, “You know what? There’s a world here.”

SCS: The cookies were the inspiration. I have twin boys: they were about 7 at the time. We were eating cookies in the backyard and the idea came of, ‘Hey – what if you eat a lion cookie and POOF! you become a lion?’ That became a game, and I just wrote the idea down and months later I turned it into a comic book. And years later I turned it into a movie script. It was a long process that started in maybe 2007/2008. It’s been with us for quite a while.

JM: So after all that’s happened… what is Saturday July 25th gonna be like for you?

TB: I think we’re finally sleeping in. And hopefully Scott won’t have to talk to an attorney for a long time.

SCS: I think I’ve warned my family that I will be on every chat room and YouTube comment thanking people for watching it. I feel I owe it to anybody who even watched the trailer just to thank them and have a conversation. There’s also a lot of misconceptions because people are, rightfully so, nervous about a movie that has animals in a circus. I always like to make sure and explain to them: there are no animals in the circus. There are only humans who are performing in the circus as animals. They ate a cookie. I think my July 25th on, I’m gonna be busier than I am now… I wanna know after all this time what the reaction’s gonna be. And I feel like I need to experience that with the audience. There’s 200 million subscribers, so I’m assuming I’ll be responding to at least 200 million comments.