Chris and Shane Houghton celebrate six years of Big City Greens success for The Mouse House with a new feature-length film. Big City Greens the Movie: Spacecation premieres this Thursday June 6th at 8pm on Disney Channel and is available on Disney+ starting this Friday June 7th. In this new Animation Scoop Q&A, the Houghtons discuss how they landed on this story and the giant leap from 11 minutes to 80. (This interview was edited for length and clarity.)

Jackson Murphy: Chris, we’re approaching 55 years since the Moon Landing. Have you always been fascinated with space?

Chris Houghton: Yes, certainly. There’s been many nights when I grew up in the country and I’d have a campfire and I’m looking up there at the great unknown and the questions that come to my mind are vast and unknowing. Yeah, this is very exciting to take the Greens to space. And we had many, many exciting experiences along the way, but one of which was a cameo by the great, former astronaut Scott Kelly. There’s just something fascinating about space. It is the great unknown, and to be able to speak and work with someone who spent a year in space was pretty remarkable.

JM: And Shane, how was he in the booth with his very fun cameo?

Shane Houghton: Oh my gosh, Scott Kelly is incredible. Not only is this man like an American hero, but also he’s very funny — and he has no right to do so… to be both. But he really was. He was very funny. He came in and we just had a blast. We were very nervous to speak with him because we’ve directed lots of actors and movie stars before, and it’s always very exciting, but there is something about Scott Kelly… somebody who’s been to space. That’s a pretty small club to be in, you know? And to talk to him and have him be so friendly and cordial and totally get the joke of his bit was just delightful.

JM: A small club, but now the Greens have joined that club! It’s Spacecaction. Before we get there, Chris, you have this opening number that is very extravagant and energized. There’s a lot of them in the movie, but you sort of, with this number, almost reestablish the characters. Was this sort of done if there are new people coming into this movie who have never seen the show?

CH: Absolutely. We wanted to write this movie as a standalone story. If you’ve never been introduced to the world of Big City Greens, you can come in and watch this movie and really enjoy it. And then hopefully, if you want more, you can go check out the series. And so because of that, yes, we did want to reintroduce the Greens, set up the world, set up the overall concept and then really launch things off with a really fun opening number. We’ve been doing more songs in the series which have been a lot of fun and an interesting new challenge. We’re huge Broadway fans… huge musical fans. And so hopefully that opening song sets the stage for many songs throughout the movie.

JM: Yes it does. And Shane, when it comes to these sequences, the editing I feel like has to be an unbelievable process on top of the animation that goes into it, on top of the lyrics, on top of it all. You guys were clearly up to the challenge of doing this, and what were the challenges of pulling all of that off?

SH: Oh, man. Well, thank you for saying that. Yeah, it’s incredible. We worked with a fantastic editor, Dave Geis, who I was actually roommates with for a period of my life. Dave is fantastic. He’s been on the series since the very beginning, and we knew when we needed an editor to come to the movie we pulled over Dave because he really elevates the movie and he looks for the storytelling opportunities. He doesn’t just cut together the panels. He looks to elevate the story. We’re so used to making 11-minute episodes over and over and over. We’ll have over 200 11-minute episodes by the time we get to season four. And so to expand that to a feature length story was definitely a challenge, but one that inspired and invigorated myself and Chris. “Can we pull this off? Can we run the series and a movie at the same time?” We doubled the size of our crew because we had a movie crew. We had the series crew. There was some cross pollination, people jumping back and forth. But it was an incredible experience.

JM: Chris, did you want to sort of expand the relationship between Cricket and his father from what you had already established in the television show?

CH: Absolutely. We wanted the story overall to feel bigger than the series. So that played into the decision to take the Greens to space. That just felt big. We wanted the artwork to look more polished and the best we could do in the timeframe and what we had. But again, there’s kind of an expectation to level up the look from the series. And then emotionally, yes. We’ve covered a lot of ground with Cricket and Bill, and there’s kind of a never ending budding of heads between the two of them. But with the movie, we finally had enough time to go to an emotional depth that if you were to do it in 11 minutes, it would probably feel forced and maybe a little cheesy or something. So yeah, the movie really opened up a lot of doors and gave us a lot of opportunities to just go further than we could in the series. And for us, that kind of helped us answer the question of, “Why make a movie?” And we felt like, “Well, we have to check these boxes. We have to go bigger in every aspect possible, or else it doesn’t really make sense to do this project.”

JM: You’re right that the animation looks sharp. It’s colorful and it’s bright, but it’s also sharp. I noticed that right away. Really cool throughout this. Shane, early on in the movie, when the Greens are gonna go up into space, and Cricket’s telling everybody, “Oh, it’s just a simulation. It’s just a simulation. This isn’t real.” And then it turns out to be real. What I like is the way it’s directed and the way it’s staged and the way you draw it, it kind of has the feeling that it could be a simulation, but also could be real.

SH: A big credit goes to our director Anna O’Brian and assistant director. Arie Vracin-Harrell. The two of them are very funny folks and really helped hone that scene. The contrast of Cricket knowing one thing and the rest of the characters not knowing something is just really inherently funny.

JM: One of the themes of the movie is, “Do you want to have the same vacation, or a different vacation? Do you want to do the same thing?” I believe Bill says, “There’s nothing wrong with predictability.” But the thing is: what you two have been able to accomplish with this show that’s been on the air now for six years and will continue to go is that it’s not predictable. It is unconventional and successful in that. There is a huge fan base and Disney has believed in you guys. How does that make you feel, and those themes going into this movie, and how you’ve seen this experience of Big City Greens?

CH: You hit the nail on the head. The inner conflict between Bill and Cricket is this idea of big, big ideas that are unpredictable and untested vs. the safety of doing the same thing you’ve always done. And in the movie we explore how there’s pros and cons to both sides. But I think there’s an element of that that we play with in the series as well. Cricket’s big idea way of thinking and his life philosophy of… shooting first and asking questions later… I think Shane and I share a similar perspective because in creating a TV series, in creating a bunch of entertainment, you do need to think big and you do need to take big swings. The audience wants to be surprised. But they also want the safety of knowing what they’re getting. So, Bill and Cricket coming together, they’d make a fantastic producer duo, is what I’m trying to say.

SH: I totally agree. I knew [this movie] was going to be like a father and son conflict. And what I realized in doing it is: the whole movie is about appreciating what different personalities bring to a relationship. Bill has this thing that he brings to the family dynamic, but so does Cricket, so does Grandma, and so does Tilly. And the problem is, when somebody gets so full of their own ego or point of view that they start blocking out the other people of their group, it starts limiting their worldview and their experiences. During the pandemic, it was obviously a hard time for everybody, but Chris and I had a tough time and we were kind of figuring things out just even in our personal lives. And I feel like I went through a lot of growth during that period where I realized more acceptance for my own life and my own relationships, and it gave me a new perspective on mine and Chris’s relationship.

We’re very different people. Even though we’re brothers and we run a show together, we’re very different. And it’s those differences that I think contribute to what makes Big City Greens a success. It’s because we bring these different points of view and we have different priorities. It’s the cocktail of the two of us and the high-level people we have on the crew who are all putting in their creative ideas. It’s that mix that makes the special concoction, and that is exactly the same as a family. Everybody’s bringing their own dynamic to this kind of group and seeing what happens. And so that’s the story we wanted to tell and we didn’t realize that until we wrote the script and then went back and kind of refined it to kind of put a spotlight more on that.