Oscar Wilde’s legendary short story The Canterville Ghost becomes an animated feature, with a couple of surprises up its sleeves. It opens in theaters this Friday October 20th. Co-Director Robert Chandler joins me for this spooky good Animation Scoop Q&A. (This interview was edited for length and clarity.)

Jackson Murphy: Oscar Wilde is an icon. What do you love about his writing — and incorporating that into this movie?

Robert Chandler: Oscar Wilde is a favorite writer, I have to say. There’s so much warmth and wit. He understands people. He mocks people without ever being truly cruel about it. When you read him, you can tell he loves his characters. In “The Canterville Ghost”, he puts an American family into this big, old English house at the turn of the century, in 1900. It would be quite easy for an English person, or an Irish person, to mock the Americans in quite a hard way. But he doesn’t. He loves the Americans. And similarly with the aristocracy, he understood fundamentally the desires and the heartbreaks of being an aristocrat. He was able to put these two cultures and values together. The American family representing modernity and the English aristocratic people and the house representing the values of old. And he made them collide… in a ghost story for children. How cool is that?

Robert Chandler: And at the center you have this ghost who’s been dead for 300 years, cursed, meeting a teenage girl from Boston. Our film really tells the story of that friendship. Initially they’re at odds with each other but they form a friendship. It’s what drew me to this story and all of [Wilde’s] writing — his characters and his warmth, and the fact that he has something to say.

JM: Virginia is not scared by Sir Simon, which is sort of a twist on many interpretations of a ghost story that we’ve seen on screen over the years. She’s a strong lead character, and you’re right: the dynamic between the two of them is very interesting as the movie goes on.

RC: It is. Sometimes you do a test between your two leads in a romantic comedy and make sure there’s a sizzle there — a chemistry test. In ours, we had it three ways. We had Virginia and Henry, with whom she falls in love with and he falls in love with her (smitten quite quickly). And Virginia and Sir Simon, who loathes Henry because of what he represents. So we had to make that triangle work. That was really about casting. Emily Carey gives a brilliant performance as Virginia. She gets her vulnerability, as well as her steeliness. And you’re right: she’s completely unimpressed. Sir Simon is so used to scaring people and them running away that when this family simply refuses to be impressed by him, it actually forces him to undergo a crisis of identity, and thus the story starts.

If they had run away, he would’ve just carried on as normal and wouldn’t have solved his essential problem, which is, “How does he get back to his wife, who he hasn’t seen in 300 years?” And then we [put] Henry into that. It’s not a love triangle. It’s a triangle of friendships. Virginia and Henry eventually do see how different they are, and in a way, that’s a perfect recipe for love. Yes, it’s a haunted house story. But essentially it’s a love story.

JM: Henry is voiced by Freddie Highmore, who has such spirit to him. And Stephen Fry voices Sir Simon. Fry recently voiced Leonardo Da Vinci in “The Inventor”, another great animated movie. I know Fry played Oscar Wilde in a 1997 movie. Was that part of his interest for wanting to get involved in “The Canterville Ghost”?

RC: Jackson, that’s exactly right. When we started this, Stephen wasn’t part of it. It was myself and the director, Kim [Burdon], and the screenwriters. We fashioned our screenplay, Kim did some beautiful drawings, and then we approached Stephen Fry. Yes, he played Oscar Wilde, but it’s more than that. He’s sort of an ambassador for Oscar Wilde’s work. We sent him the screenplay, just as a voice for hire job, and he came back with Gina Carter, who’s his producing/business partner and they said, “We want to do more than just give Stephen’s voice to this. We love this. Can we be your partners on this?” That was right at the front of the process. My company and Gina’s company produced it together.

Stephen loves Oscar Wilde, but for me, The Canterville Ghost is sort of Wilde’s King Lear in literature. It’s this older character who’s got a lot to lose and a lot of experience. Stephen brought that lovely depth to the role. I think he gives a superb voice performance. And Freddie came in with this youthful energy of being a very privileged, landowning English aristocrat. I can understand why Virginia’s rejecting him. But you see his heart. He’s a genuine person. And she sees that.

JM: Sir Simon longs to be with his wife, and part of that is that he, as the ghost, cannot leave the property. As you were making this over the past few years during the pandemic, there were a lot of times where families could not leave their house. Were there parallels as far as this longing to be somewhere else — to be with other people — as you were making this?

RC: I love that. I hadn’t noticed that. And now that you say that… there it is! There’s a theme. Jackson, brilliant. We made this film during the pandemic. I was directing it from my place in Hampshire in England. I would say it’s a bit like Canterville. It isn’t. It’s much smaller. But it was built in 1600, so it has its share of ghosts. We were storyboarding in New Zealand, animating in India, post-production picture in Ireland. I did all the voice recordings in London. Most of that was done by the pandemic via Zoom. I hadn’t picked up on that housebound thing, but now that you say it, yes, of course. He is trapped. Being released for him is much more significant than just returning to his wife. It’s letting go and being able to walk out of the house effectively.

JM: We get to the third act, and the film takes a shift that I think is very powerful and very effective. It involves Hugh Laurie’s character. As you were making this third act that really makes you think, how did you want to approach it — with the tone and the content?

RC: Thank you for saying that. The third act for me was the real reason for making the film. If you read the short story, Oscar doesn’t go into any detail at all about what happens in that walled garden. We know the before and the after. But he doesn’t tell us what goes on. He spends all his time with the family racing around the countryside looking for Virginia, and he mines that for comedy. But I read it and thought, “What goes on inside that walled garden? What happened?” We made a point of showing that. We spent as much time on that sequence as on the rest of the movie. We were planning it in advance. It has its own color palette. The set turns. This is the Grim Reaper… Hugh Laurie’s… turf. Simon and Virginia enter that. It costs a lot for them to enter that. It’s drama. Great sacrifices have to be made. We wanted that to look different — to feel like it was part of Canterville but through a different lens. It was all painted as if they were in a theater. We went for it. Hugh Laurie really brought his A-game. I thought he did it brilliantly.

JM: Visually it is striking and complex. And what you have to say about time, love, romance and life is really going to especially get the adults to go, “Wow.”

RC: I hope so. “Do not waste your time. Time is precious.” We made sure these messages were an intrinsic part of that battle and ending. Thank you for saying that. I think children will also respond to those messages. I think film should always have something to say, and that’s one of the things we’re trying to say in our film.

JM: What are your plans for Halloween time?

RC: It’s no surprise I love monsters. I’m surrounded by them with posters in my office! Halloween is like 365 days a year for me, when I come into my office. I love it. This very year it’s nice because we have a special screening of “The Canterville Ghost” in Marlborough, which is not unlike Canterville, and I’m going to be introducing the film there to families. I hope they can get something from it. I love Halloween. Who doesn’t?