August 16th, 2021 
Jackson Murphy 
Paw Patrol is the latest popular Nickelodeon animated series to get the feature film treatment. You can see Paw Patrol: The Movie in theaters, and watch it on Paramount+, starting this Friday August 20th. Director Cal Brunker and co-writer Bob Barlen (Escape From Planet Earth, The Nut Job 2: Nutty By Nature) discuss amping up the franchise to give fans of all ages an entertaining new chapter.
Jackson Murphy: My cousin is three years old. He loves Chase. He is obsessed with this show. It’s his favorite show. And I cannot wait for him to see this movie… because he will love it. How has the series impacted you?
Cal Brunker: I’ve got a six-year-old and a three-year-old, so we are in the eye of the hurricane in terms of Paw right now. At our house we’re stepping over vehicles and walking around the tower in the living room. So I got to see my kids loving the show. I watched it with them, obviously, as you do. When we had a chance to get involved with the movie, my goal from a directing standpoint and our goal as writers was to try and keep our younger audience engaged in the same way they are with the show while expanding the theatrical experience to feel like it could be for the whole family. Trying to take what my kids love about the show, keep that in there but also expand the scope and the excitement and emotion for a broader audience as well. So hopefully the older siblings, the parents, everybody gets something out of this movie, like a true family film.
JM: I think they will. Bob, what about you? How has the series impacted your life?
Bob Barlen: I have five nieces and nephews who are all in the Paw pocket. Similar to Cal, they’re superfans and I think when we’re writing and making movies we’re always thinking ‘we are the first audience’. But then we’re thinking about who we’re making it for and getting a chance to make something and take a beloved brand and franchise and turn that show into a feature film and expand it was an awesome opportunity and a lot of fun to do.
JM: Great. You’re right Cal that the scope is big. You have taken the show and you have raised it up several notches in terms of the stakes and the danger and the intensity. How difficult was it in amping it up and still keeping it a G-rated film?
CB: The first and most important thing we wanted to do was to have a deeper emotional journey. This movie really focuses on Chase’s story. It’s about everybody but we follow Chase’s emotional journey. Rather than thinking about the scope, the first thing was going, “How do we give people a great character experience? A character they’re gonna care about through the film.” And then after that we started building up the set pieces. The audience is expecting these rescues, and we wanted to blow their hair back and give them something they’ve never been able to see on the TV series before.
In terms of keeping it acceptable and not too intense for our current audience, that was always something that we were conscious of over the course of the process. And we showed it to kids along the way. It’s fascinating because a lot of younger kids end-up watching what their older siblings are doing. So we tested it with four year olds who were like, “When I was watching The Avengers…” And you’re like, “You were watching The Avengers?! Okay. Wow.” We’re nowhere close to that in terms of intensity so we’re safe. But we tested it with kids and made sure that it was something that they were excited by and riveted by but wasn’t too intense for them. And then for us and the theatrical experience, we wanted to have an emotional journey for the audience members too, where you go, “Hey – things are gonna be a little unsafe. But don’t worry, it’s gonna be okay in the end.” So we’re gonna push them further than the show would, and that’s the reason you go to the movies – maybe to live vicariously for a little while and then solve these problems and show that everything’s gonna be okay. So I think we did that.
JM: Absolutely. That’s really interesting that you tested it on young kids. They must’ve been so thrilled to get to see the movie early. I know obviously for test screenings audiences have to sign things and say, “We cannot talk about this!” How do you get four year olds to keep Paw Patrol: The Movie details a secret?
CB: Well, we were counting on maybe they couldn’t remember all the details enough and maybe we counted on four year olds not having Twitter accounts to put it out into the world. The other part of the testing that was great for us is that we didn’t just bring in the youngest kids. We brought in their whole families. And we got a really great reaction from older siblings, 10 & 11 year olds and parents. That’s the bullseye we were trying to hit. Can we keep our younger viewers feeling good about the experience – feeling like it’s for them – but have enough in there for everybody?
JM: You succeed with that for sure. I love the more dramatic relationship Chase and Ryder have in this. And this is one of the cases where the dogs and the humans can just talk with each other and there’s no barrier whatsoever. And that’s not always the case in animation. As a writer, Bob, how cool is that feeling when it comes to making this movie?
BB: The Paw Patrol characters are really fun to write for and to get the chance to expand the show into a feature was great for us. To write them and have the opportunity to expand those characters more and have new characters, as you’ve seen in the movie… the chance to do some new creative stuff. Liberty is our new character. She’s not quite like the pups in the Paw Patrol and that was fun for us to get a chance to have someone with a bit more edge.
CB: Yeah, she’s edgy. She’s a bit more subversive than the pups from the show and that was a fun mix for us to throw those characters in together. We talked early on with, “Do we play around with the logic of who can hear them?” And we felt that that was really just gonna be a complication that didn’t help the story and just got in the way. In our world, the pups can talk to anybody and they can talk back. But Humdinger’s cats can’t. That’s our threshold.
BB: Dogs talk. Cats don’t. That’s just the way it works.
CB: There’s cats on the show who talk but in this movie the only talking animals are the pups.
JM: And speaking of Liberty, we can’t say everything about her. But Cal, was there a lot of planning (without giving everything away) that went into how Liberty is going to be brought into this movie and this world and her specific scenes and goals?
CB: Yeah. We wanted two things for Liberty… that I think I can probably talk about. Stop me if I’m giving too much away. We wanted her to contrast the Paw Patrol team that we know a lot. So we tried to put her in a very different situation. She’s a city pup that lives on her own, is a little rough around the edges – and we thought we could build up that character. If you had to survive in the city by yourself and you didn’t have a lot of a support network there, you’d probably grow a thicker skin. The pups are so… polite and thoughtfully spoken, and Liberty… talks fast and has had to survive in the big city. So she’s got a real difference to the other pups.
And then in terms of her relationship to them, we thought it would be wonderful if she was a super fan. We thought she would idolize these characters. And then that opened up a lot for her wanting to be around them. How does she impress them? It created a great dynamic between the characters – and I won’t say more than that. But you can kind of imagine the trajectory that that goes on.
JM: Yes. Bob, I think the MVP in the voice cast is Jimmy Kimmel. He is fantastic as Marty Muckraker, the TV news reporter. Are you one of those guys who is obsessed with TV news or going on YouTube and finding really funny, wacky TV news clips?
BB: In writing Marty, we were looking for a bit of an outrageous guy – as you can see as his character plays out. Having Jimmy Kimmel play him… Jimmy’s so funny and he really brought a lot of comedy to the role. Just in general, it seems like a lot of those Marty clips from the movie could be YouTube-able. Certainly some of his stuff has been clipped and put on YouTube and shared a million times before.
CB: We always liked the idea that Marty would be trying to be professional, but every now and then you’d see behind the curtain of who he really is as a character. It would peak through and then he’d go back to his professional ways. That’s the comedy angle of him and Jimmy hit that beautifully.
JM: There’s also a great line early on in the film about the “Paw Patrol” swag. All the merch! My three year old cousin has a ton of merch, and I’m sure he’s gonna want a new version of Chase’s vehicle that’s a sweet ride! Cal, how was it designing that?
CB: That was a wonderful part of this process that was a new one for me. From the very beginning of script development, we were working with the toy team and they’ve got a whole team of amazing inventors. And they’re working on ideas, “Hey we can do this!” and they’re showing off these different inventions that haven’t become toys yet. And we’re like, “That could be cool if you could do this and this.” And they’re like, “Okay. Let us go to the lab and try to figure it out.” Meanwhile Bob and I are writing that into the script. It was a really cool process to see Chase’s cruiser. Their new headquarters is another one where we were involved from the beginning in writing and designing at the same time. The toy team bent over backwards to try and give us everything we wanted to put into the story and find a way to do that in the toys. It makes the stuff integrate so well into the movie and hopefully kids will get a real kick out of it.
JM: I think they will. A new toy version of the headquarters is gonna be in so many living rooms around the country – around the world. You’ve got Adam Levine as well with the “Good Mood” song in this. What made you want to bring him on board? Was he attracted to wanting to get involved in the “Paw Patrol” world?
CB: Yeah. We’ve got a bunch of actors in the movie, and Adam as a songwriter, that have kids right in this pocket. If this is a part of your life at home, it’s a chance for them to be the cool parent to their kids to be involved with the movie. When we called Tyler Perry, I think his child was sitting with him and he’s like, “Should Dad be in the Paw Patrol movie?” I think it’s that kind of a conversation.
Back to Adam and the song, it’s a really upbeat, fun song and we thought Adam’s style of music and singing is really stuff that makes you wanna dance and is really positive. It felt like a perfect marriage with the movie and with what “Paw Patrol” stands for. And he’s got kids in the age range. It worked out great. It’s a great tune. I think it’s gonna be… the song of the back half of the summer. It’s amazing. I love it.
Left: co-writer Bob Barlen – and Right: Director Cal Brunker
JM: Yes! And it’s in the movie twice: [early on] and during the credits. For so many young ones including my three year old cousin, this will probably be their first experience either safely seeing a film in an indoor theater or going to a Drive-In and seeing this on a gigantic screen. Hopefully young ones will fall in love with seeing animation on giant screens. For both of you, is there an experience of seeing an animated film on the big screen for the first time that always sticks with you?
CB: For me, it would’ve been the 2D Disney stuff of Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King and that era of animation. When I was a little bit older… The Iron Giant was that for me when I just watched a film and was completely emotionally connected to the characters in a way that maybe I didn’t know could happen in animation. To feel empathy for the Giant and especially at the end of that film. For us that’s the excitement: having this as a shared experience, whether it’s with a bunch of people in a theater or whether it’s with your family at home or at the Drive-In. Being able to connect to a movie in a way that feels meaningful and emotional for you can really stick with you. It certainly has for me.
BB: The early Disney stuff, certainly. Aladdin was a big one for me. The first Toy Story from Pixar and [it being] the first computer animated movie… I was hooked. And I haven’t looked back since. It was such an amazing, transformative experience of seeing these toys come to life and be characters you really care about and have such emotion. That’s the magic trick we’re trying to perform… and just make the audience care about these characters. And if they do, we’ve done our jobs.
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