Chris Sanders on ‘The Wild Robot’ making Oscar history for DreamWorks: ‘I could not be more delighted’
The Wild Robot made history for DreamWorks Animation on Thursday when it received three Oscar nominations: Best Animated Feature (Chris Sanders and Jeff Hermann), Best Score (Kris Bowers), and Best Sound (Randy Thom, Brian Chumney, Gary A. Rizzo, and Leff Lefferts). That’s the most bids ever for a single film in the studio’s 30-year history.
“I could not be more delighted,” director-writer Sanders tells Gold Derby via phone from Japan, where The Wild Robot was “on the verge of opening widely.”
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“So many people work on these for such a long time, and this sort of recognition is just so wonderful.”
Sanders is now tied with Pete Docter and Hayao Miyazaki with four nominations in the Best Animated Feature category. Sanders previously contended at the Oscars for Lilo & Stitch (2002), How to Train Your Dragon (2010), and The Croods (2013), and is now looking for his first win.
The Wild Robot is the first DreamWorks Animation title to receive a sound nomination at the Oscars, which Sanders says is “absolutely thrilling.” “The sound was so beautifully and carefully done at Skywalker Sound, and sound is such a huge part of this film. For a movie about a robot who is lost in the wilderness,” says Sanders. “I didn’t even realize how complex the sound was going to be, and to pull our audience into a believably wild place is much, much more work than you could ever imagine. And they did such a beautiful job.”
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Bowers’ nomination for Best Score is well-deserved because he’s “one of the biggest voices in the film,” says Sanders, even up there with the performances of Lupita Nyong’o as Roz and Pedro Pascal as Fink. “I learned a long time ago that music does some of the heaviest lifting story-wise, and so many things about this film lay in places that are beyond words. He did such a sublime job — such joy and emotion that he was able to convey.” Bowers won an Oscar just last year for directing the documentary short film “The Last Repair Shop.”
Sanders is “so proud” that The Wild Robot is listed among the other four nominees in Best Animated Feature: Flow, Inside Out 2, Memoir of a Snail, and Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl. “This is such a great year for animation in general,” Sanders says, “and to be right there with everybody else, I could not be happier.”
“I can’t say enough about the crew that made this film. It was a complete departure visually,” the filmmaker continues. “We had to change the technology. New technology was written so that we could get a painterly style up on screen. I started in the hand-drawn days when all of the backgrounds and characters were painted, and this film represents a return to that.”
Sanders calls this entire experience an “incredible journey” and is “humbled by it.” He’s excited to “get some sleep” and isn’t yet thinking about the impending Oscars ceremony, which will take place on March 2. “I have a lot of phone calls to make and a lot of people on my crew I need to congratulate. And just enjoy the moment.”
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