Emmy-winning choreographer Peggy Holmes has transitioned to animation in recent years, directing one Little Mermaid and two Tinker Bell films for Disney. Her latest feature is Luck, from Skydance Animation, premiering August 5th on AppleTV+. 18 minutes of select scenes (which I’ve screened) are now being showcased at the 2022 Annecy International Animation Film Festival. Ahead of her trip to France, this Irishman spoke with Holmes all about Luck. (This Animation Scoop Q&A was edited for length and clarity.)

Jackson Murphy: You’re about to go off to France for Annecy. Wow! How does that feel?

Peggy Holmes: Oh my gosh! It feels amazing. I’ve never been. Super excited. Annecy is the big start of sharing Luck with the world. We couldn’t be more excited.

JM: Well I wish you good luck with Annecy! Sam Greenfield, the main character, is looking for her luck to change. She ends-up in The Land of Luck. What were your goals with this lead character?

PH: Sam is the unluckiest girl in the world in every way. The real bad luck Sam has is: she grew-up in the foster care system. She has no family. Ultimately, this story is about her finding a family, which is really great. The movie’s called Luck, but it’s all about love. Love is the luckiest thing in the world. I really believe that. She goes into The Land of Luck to get some good luck for her friend Hazel, who’s only [five years old]. She’s also in the group home Sam lived in. She wants to get Hazel a little good luck so she can find her forever family and not end-up alone like Sam. Sam is generous of heart and spirit. We’re all about research at Skydance. We met with these young adults who have been through very similar situations as Sam, and they shared with us about their lives. They were so positive, despite the bad luck they’ve had in their lives. They have a heart, are hopeful and always wish the best for others. We were really taken by them and wanted to honor those stories.

JM: Wow. I can feel the love when you talk about this movie. Two-time Emmy nominee Eva Noblezada voices Sam. I saw her in a film a couple years ago called Yellow Rose. She was fantastic.

PH: It was so fun working with Eva. She had not done a lot of voiceovers. It was so incredible to watch. As she got used to this venue and this process, you could see her then take off — and her performance take off right before your eyes. She’s so sweet and joyful. Haven’t met her in person yet because we made the movie over Zoom! I look forward to meeting her in person. The other thing that was really important is: I come from a place of music. I was a dancer and a choreographer. We knew we wanted some music in the film. Eva was the perfect lead character. She does two covers of Madonna’s Lucky Star in the movie, and they’re phenomenal.

JM: Cinema icon Jane Fonda voices The Dragon. When Jane Fonda came to near where I live, Albany, NY, 40 years ago to make the film Rollover, my father got to see her film a scene. And she did push-ups before takes. Did she do push-ups over Zoom before recording her lines for this?

PH: You know what? Your father will be happy to hear that Jane is a super physical actress. Even in a voiceover record, she is up. She’s off her chair. She’s giving it everything she has. She is an incredible actress. She was so generous. We had her meet with the story artists so she could see what the process of animation is like. And as we watched her over Zoom watch the story artists pitch her their sequences, you could see that as she saw the drawings of The Dragon and the shapes, she started taking it into her body. And she started creating the work she needed to do to become this character. She had a really awesome idea we put into the movie… “It’s a 40 foot dragon. I have this long tail. I should wrap it around my body like a boa.” We did that, and it’s really amazing.

JM: That is awesome. A lot of cool characters in the film, including Bob the black cat. There’s a moment in the footage so far where Sam is chasing Bob through the city streets. I was blown away by the lighting because it’s a sort of stormy, rainy night. Adding the lighting is so key and makes a huge difference for the realism.

PH: Yeah. It’s really true. The lighting is so, so important because it helps tell the story. Lighting creates mood. And it tells us how to feel. In that chase in particular: we’re in love with that sequence because it’s good luck and bad luck right before our eyes in the city streets.

JM: And I like the moment where Sam is going through the street, more in the daytime, and she gets all the green lights. Isn’t it always a great feeling when you get the green lights?!

PH: That’s so fun that you’re touching on that. Luck is a super universal concept. We all experience it every day: good luck and bad luck… all the time. It’s so relatable. We wanted this movie to be really relatable — that you feel like “I feel just like her! That happens to me on the bad luck days — and the good luck days!” One of the things in our research was I read a lot of papers about luck. Humans are obsessed with luck. There’s so much written about the idea and concept of luck. My big takeaway is: luck is random. You can’t control it. You can’t create it. It comes and goes in and out of your life. It’s kind of how you react to it that’s what’s interesting and meaningful.

JM: And with all that research you put in, was it then difficult or easier to figure out how you were going to incorporate the four leaf clovers and the black cat and the lucky pennies — some of the common elements of luck we’re all very familiar with?

PH: Once we got our research and waded-out things that were superstition or faith-based or religious… we wanted it to just purely be luck. Once you start wading out the different arms that are connected to the idea of luck and just make it pure luck, then it gets much, much easier. And decisions are always based on what is going to help us tell the story. What is going to help the protagonist’s journey the most? And those are the ideas that end-up in the story.

JM: You have a background as a choreographer and won an Emmy for Fame L.A. And I feel like the choreography might’ve come in handy with the sequence with Sam and Bob and the mechanisms going down into The Land of Luck. Did that background help you with that?

PH: Absolutely. I can’t help it. I just think in a rhythmic way. I’m not an animator or an artist in any way. What I can bring to that table is this sense of rhythm and storytelling with your body. And because I’m so used to putting sequences together with music, I just naturally cut things with a certain tempo and rhythm in mind. That’s where it comes to play.

JM: This is an incredible summer for animated features in theaters and on streaming services. Why do you think now is the right time for a movie like Luck to be released?

PH: People want positivity and inspiration right now. They are craving it. We’ve all been through a really hard time together in the world. People really want to sit back, relax, be inspired and really be inspired to just keep going. When those bad luck days come, just keep going because there are some good luck ones coming too.