July 29th, 2024 
Jackson Murphy 
Sandy and SpongeBob head to The Lone Star State in the live-action/CG feature Saving Bikini Bottom: The Sandy Cheeks Movie. It premieres Friday August 2nd on Netflix. Executive Producers Vincent Waller and Marc Ceccarelli celebrate 25 years of SpongeBob with a deep dive into the beloved characters and the wild new film. (This Animation Scoop Q&A was edited for length and clarity.)
Jackson Murphy: Happy 25 years! Vincent, can you believe it’s been a quarter century of SpongeBob and his friends?
Vincent Waller: It is hard to believe, but 25 years does go by like that whenever you’re having fun, and we have been having fun.
JM: And Sandy Cheeks has been a core part of the SpongeBob universe since the very beginning with “Tea at the Tea Dome”, part of episode one. Vincent, when you think back to 25 years ago and Sandy starting out in SpongeBob and being a core part right from the beginning… the impact that this character has had… What do you think she has meant to the overall SpongeBob world over the last 25 years?
VW: Wow, deep question. Well, I think it gives us the added point of view from someone who’s not in Bikini Bottom, just like the rest of us, the viewers in Bikini Bottom. She is the outside… the person who can look and go, “What?! Did you just see that? Did you see what they’re doing?” And it’s also nice to have a good strong female character to talk about what’s going on in the world.
JM: Yes, we’ve got her leading this movie and SpongeBob along the ride as well. Bikini Bottom gets taken to Texas. And there’s a huge history, Mark, with Texas and SpongeBob. And what you get to do with this movie is explore Sandy’s family. How fun was that — getting to decide on the different characters and the different family members we meet?
Marc Ceccarelli: That was really fun. We always love when we get to introduce new characters to the show because they add new flavor to the show. Since it’s been around for 25 years, it’s always nice to add another flavor to the show.
VW: And Marc actually did the drawings for the new character lineup of her family that no one had ever seen except little tiny pictures.
MC: Yeah. They had only been referred to in past episodes. When we started making the movie, we were researching what we had done in the past, all we could find was a very tiny picture in the background of one episode. And it was so small that we just decided to use that as license to go ahead and redo it… come up with our own new family unit for the characters.
VW: I think they look great.
MC: We had introduced Sandy’s sister in another episode, Rosie and her daughters who are Sandy’s nieces, but we actually didn’t use any of them in the movie.
JM: I love these characters. I love how they turned out. And one of them is brother Randy, who is voiced by Johnny Knoxville, who was on a great episode of SpongeBob in 2012, “Extreme Spots”. Vincent, did Johnny want to come back to the SpongeBob universe right away? How did he feel about returning and voicing a new character?
VW: As I understand it, yes. He was excited to do it. He did a great job on it.
MC: He’s kind of perfectly cast for the character because the character is an actual daredevil sort of stunt person. That seems to be stunt casting in a way.
VW: And I still remember I was at a cafe in Hollywood and I saw Johnny come limping in with a bunch of his friends from the show he used to do with the crazy stunts with a giant bag of ice strapped to one leg. He’s a true artist. He’ll go the extra mile for whatever he needs to do. And ihe Sandy movie, he does all kinds of things. He gets into police chases. He wrestles a tornado.
JM: The tornadoes look good, by the way. I saw a certain Twister movie last night. The new one. And I gotta tell ya, what you guys do with the Texas Twisters in this rivals up the visuals in that movie!
VW: (laughs) Roping, riding, running. That’s what we do with them.
JM: Good fun in this. Also, what’s great about the movie, Marc, is what you do with SpongeBob. This is a CG animated film. And we’ve seen some CG in some of the previous Spongebob movies. But what I love watching SpongeBob specifically this time is how expressive he is. I feel like SpongeBob may be more expressive with his face and his body than we’ve ever seen him before.
MC: We’ve been doing different CG projects recently like Kamp Koral and these movies for Netflix. One of the things that was really important to us was to make sure that we can continue to have the sort of expressive, crazy facial expressions and body morphs that we’re so used to on the TV show. And that’s all very difficult to do in CG. So it was quite a challenge, but the animators always seem to be up to the task.
JM: It really looks cool. Liza Johnson is the director of the film. She does a terrific job balancing the animation and the live action, including Wanda Sykes playing this scientist with blue hair. Wow. Vincent, she goes all in on this and she does a great job.
VW: She’s a villain who’s completely fixated on creatures of the deep that she wanted to hug and squeeze and kiss and all those things that you can do to a character. But when she would try it with fish, they didn’t fare so well out in the air with her. So she came up with a scheme of how to turn these creatures into toys that she could play with forever.
JM: It’s quite something. And Marc, it’s all about consumerism. And I feel like that’s a fun nod to SpongeBob being, for the last 25 years, one of the biggest consumerism phenomenons with products of all time. You guys seemed to have a lot of fun with what you do in some of those sequences.
MC: Yeah, we were poking fun at ourselves a bit there. We have a good sense of humor about everything, including ourselves. It’s often fun to poke yourself even more than outside sources.
JM: And what’s great about what Sandy does and says in this film about friendship and family and science… she has such a devotion to science. And Vincent, science is sort of what you guys all do. Animation is an art form and also a science.
VW: The science of comedy is mostly what we do. (laughs)
JM: Science of comedy, and there’s good timing in this when it comes to the comedy. Was that tricky to pull off with a bunch of new characters this time, along with the classic characters we love?
VW: I think it’s mostly due to our writers. They are also scientists of comedy, and from the ground up, Kaz in particular, has studied everything from vaudeville to now, soaking up every comedy thing he can get. He’s like a didact. He’s just like gag, gag, gag, gag, gag, gag, gag. We have to actually muzzle him to make him stop adding gags to shows.
JM: Marc, Squidward has a few fun elements to the movie as well, including a song. You gotta stay through the end credits when you’re watching on Netflix. So many people over the years have said Squidward is their favorite character. That classic public radio line in the SpongeBob movie. What Roger Bumpass does with that voice performance and what he’s able to bring to that character, what has amazed you in listening to Squidward over the last quarter century?
MC: Roger is such a great comedian. He’s got such an awesome sense of timing and also his voices that he does, not just Squidward, but all the voices he does on our show are all so unique and unique to him. If you know Roger at all, he’s very much like Squidward. He’s kind of that guy.
VW: He rides a recumbent bicycle. (laughs)
MC: Yeah. I used to live around the corner for him and I’d see him all the time, on his recumbent bicycle, like riding up and down the neighborhood. We love that character because he’s the sourpuss and that puts him in the position where he can take the most damage because he’s asking for it. With the physical comedy that we do, it’s always great to have a fall guy like that. We really love Squidward. We love writing comedy for Squidward.
VW: As well as being another outside voice going, “What are you doing?! You people are idiots! What are you doing?” He just has to deal with them all the time. Roger’s acting chops are amazing. I can’t think of anybody better. If you have to do ADR, Roger will make whatever emotion you need to fit into that thing, fit in, even if somebody else did it before him.
MC: Also his character is the artist on the show, so we’re often making fun of ourselves when we make fun of Squidward.
JM: And of course Carolyn Lawrence is Sandy and I think fans of hers for the last 25 years will love seeing her in her element, in her zone. Sandy Cheeks is ready to be there when her friends and family need her the most. It’s awesome that you guys have had the opportunity to give her this movie and this opportunity to see Sandy do her thing and do a fantastic job.
VW: She’s not only just doing her normal crazy acrobatics and karate skills and whatnot, but you actually get to see really a deep look into her family and the emotional structure of the whole thing and where she came from… what her impetus in life is… her struggle to decide between going into show business or working for the good of the world or at least what she thinks is the good of the world.
JM: I think families are going to love it. I think SpongeBob fans are going to love it. I was blown away by the Super Bowl telecast earlier this year with SpongeBob and Patrick. That was incredible live television. We have this movie and more in the works for streaming services, as well as the theatrical movie, which last time we talked, I know there was a little tease about what to expect from the next one. You guys are still working hard on that, making that happen
VW: Oh, yeah. (laughs)
MC: That and a lot of other stuff that we can’t talk about. (laughs)
JM: We look forward to so much more in the SpongeBob universe. Here’s to another 25 years!
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