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Due to some apparent temporal anomaly or gross miscalculation of the calendar, it seems that it’s already been 14 long years since a certain blue-skinned, bulbous-head alien baddie tried to dominate citizens of Metro City in DreamWorks Animation’s Megamind. Time does indeed fly!
With a voice cast that included funnyman Will Ferrell as the titular villain, Brad Pitt as the celebrated crusader Metro Man and Tina Fey voicing spunky reporter Roxanne Ritchi, this charming 2010 animated movie invaded theaters during the glory days of our planet’s insatiable appetite for superhero fare and collected a tidy $321 million by the time its theatrical run concluded.
Fans have clamored for a sequel for more than a decade and now their prayers have been answered thanks to this month’s Megamind vs. the Doom Syndicate. It’s a fresh feature film written by the original movie’s screenwriters that arrives as a springboard event to Megamind Rules!, an eight-episode companion series also arriving on Peacock.
Protector of the City
Penned by Alan Schoolcraft and Brent Simons and directed by Eric Fogel of MTV’s Celebrity Deathmatch, Megamind vs. the Doom Syndicate picks up three days after the first movie’s plot with Megamind trying to fulfill his role of benevolent hero and cosmopolitan protector after Metro Man’s retirement. Chaos erupts when a collective of former henchmen arrives to carry out a diabolical plan to blast Metro City to the moon.
Vocal duties fall upon the likes of Keith Ferguson (Megamind), Laura Post (Roxanne Ritchi), Josh Brener (Ol’ Chum), Maya Aoki Tuttle (Keiko Morita), Emily Tuñon (Lady Doppler), Talon Warburton (Lord Nighty-Knight), Scott Adsit (Pierre Pressure), Chris Sullivan (Behemoth), Tony Hale (Mel/Mr. Donut), Jeanine Mason (Christino Christo) and Adam Lambert (Machiavillain).
‘When the original film came out, it was almost ahead of its time in the way it was poking fun at the superhero genre.’
— Director Eric Fogel
Director Eric Fogel’s funny bone is in full effect here, and as the mirthful maestro behind MTV’s Celebrity Deathmatch claymation shorts, he layers the film with equal amounts of pathos and punchlines. He not only helmed the new sequel but also oversaw the Megamind Rules! writers.
“I always felt that Megamind was an underappreciated little gem out of DreamWorks Animation. I saw so much potential,” Fogel recalls. “There’s such a love for that character that you have so much to gain by diving back in. Knowing that Brent and Alan, the original creators, were going to be involved — that got me all fired up. When do we start? Let’s make this thing!”
“He comes off very pompous at times, but there’s something very vulnerable at the core of Megamind,” notes Fogel. “When the original film came out, it was almost ahead of its time in the way it was poking fun at the superhero genre. Now it’s interesting to look at what we’ve done here in the wake of the cooling off of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Superhero movies don’t feel quite as popular as they [once] were, so bringing him back now feels like a really interesting time to re-explore that genre.”
While referencing the first feature, Fogel and his talented posse examined the original models and designs, which still looked beautiful, then rebuilt them working off those early concepts and frameworks. With technology evolving so much, it became necessary to retexture everything.
“Then it was a matter of figuring out how do we get this thing to feel cinematic and have an epic scope within a TV pipeline,” says Fogel. “That was a huge puzzle and a huge challenge to piece it all together. The movie was produced within the episodic pipeline, so we had to approach it almost as a bunch of mini-episodes knowing how we were going to string it together to make the movie. 88 Pictures did the actual animation, and the design through animatics was done with a partner studio up in Vancouver named Doberman Pictures. A large percentage of the production was outsourced for this, and we worked closely with the teams. It all worked really well.”
Since bringing back Will Ferrell to reprise his role as Megamind was not an option due to budgetary issues and scheduling, Fogel was fortunate to have an incredible wealth of vocal talent at his disposal.
“Keith Ferguson, who I believe was Will Ferrell-approved as a voice double, brings so many new layers to that Megamind character,” Fogel says. “He’s such a joy to work with and incredible with improv and gives you everything you need every single time. Laura Post, playing Roxanne Ritchi and replacing Tina Fey — I’d challenge you to even recognize the difference.
“I’m honored that DreamWorks trusted me with this property and there was a lot of nervousness and anticipation,” says the veteran director. “Seeing those first fully rendered shots coming in after you go through all the stages of animation, it’s like going from black-and-white to full color. That’s when you can really see and know if the thing is working. It was such a relief when we saw those final shots and it was gorgeous and it looks like the original, and we knew we’d accomplished the mission.”
To retain the style and wit of the original, DreamWorks Animation retrieved original scribes Schoolcraft and Simons who plunged straight into that epic supervillain world with unbridled optimism.
“We always have a Megamind mindset,” Schoolcraft tells Animation Magazine. “He’s sort of a cross between Brent and I, so the mentality is easy to bring back up. We wrote the original spec script in 2003, but it didn’t sell. DreamWorks ended up buying it at the beginning of 2007.”
These creative partners both had day jobs and were struggling as writers at a time when the internet was a novelty and they were fortunate enough to have unlimited telephone minutes.
“Alan was in New York working for the Coen Brothers as their assistant,” adds Simons. “I was in Los Angeles temping, and we wrote together at night over the phone. It ended up getting us representation and jobs, but that was really the most we thought we could hope for. The script had a lot of fans around town, but we were still struggling. Then we got this call that the script sold at DreamWorks and they were going to make it, and we thought it was a prank.”
‘Megamind has always been innocent in a way, even though he’s a villain … There’s a childlike innocence to him that’s going to be in the sequel and the series.’
— EP/showrunner Alan Schoolcraft (pictured, left, with Brent Simons)
Megamind is a throwback to a very different place and time in modern society, before social media triggered everyone’s hypercritical nature about entertainment offerings and the world seemed far less polarizing. Keeping the character pure was actually quite easy for the writers.
“He’s always been innocent in a way, even though he’s a villain,” notes Schoolcraft. “He’s unaware of the world and all our prejudices. There’s a childlike innocence to him that’s going to be in the sequel and the series. He hasn’t had to deal with emotions his whole life and now he’s trying to be a real person. It’s like a minefield for him, but he does it in a positive way because he’s really excited to be like everyone else. I think that worked back then and it’s refreshing now to not have a cynical main character.”
Animation technology and tools have advanced greatly since Megamind first hit the silver screen and it was essential that the production offered fans an authentic sense of continuity.
“We had the movie to work off of and Tom McGrath, the genius director of the original film [who went on to direct the blockbuster Boss Baby movies] created such a colorful world, so we had a great starting point for everybody,” Simons explains. “When it came to designing new characters, we did our best to go off that. The Canadian team at Doberman, who did designs for new characters and updating of existing ones, did a great job.”
Schoolcraft was inspired by DreamWorks’ reputation as a fertile environment to deliver organic storytelling, engaging visuals and internal momentum for its star slate of animated projects.
Terrific Teamwork
“You have to have great characters to make a story,” says Schoolcraft. “DreamWorks has such a great team of artists. Making a movie is a collaborative effort. You put something on the page, but that doesn’t mean anything until you see it on boards, then you see an animatic, then you see previz and then you can constantly make adjustments. Starting from the character, you pick the journey that best fits this person. It starts small, and then it’s just building out the world.
“Just having Megamind back in our lives was amazing,” he continues. “When you start writing again you realize how much you missed him. It’s so good that he gets a second life again.”
In refining their collaboration between the writing team and the artists, there’s admittedly a “creative dueling banjos” where the crew works to craft something that looks better and better. “Especially when you have a great director at the head of the operation like Tom McGrath or Eric Fogel,” admits Simons. “That’s what we’ve fallen in love with in animation. It’s magical to write something and have a brilliant artist sketch it and put it on a screen the day you wrote it.”
Megamind vs. the Doom Syndicate and the Megamind Rules! series both premiere on Peacock on March 1.
