In this post about the Epic movie, guest contributor Nancy shares the highlights of her discussion with the director, Chris Wedge (ICE AGE). You can read more about Nancy’s “epic” experience – including her conversations with cast members Colin Farrell, Amanda Seyfried, Aziz Ansari and Chris O’ Dowd – next week over on her blog, The Mama Maven. Thanks Nancy!
It was amazing to hear from Chris Wedge, who directed and produced the Epic movie along with Blue Skies Studios. (He is the co-founder/a partial owner of Blue Skies Studios.) Mr. Wedge discussed how the movie materialized. “We just started dreaming up an idea for a movie. It was this place, it was the woods that we started thinking about…” Chris’s good friend William Joyce had just finished his book (The Leaf Men) so they used the notion of little leaf men type guardians being out there from the book. Then, they came up with the rest of the ideas for the Epic movie together over the span of eight years with the help of additional collaborators, writers and designers.
When discussing the themes in Epic, Mr. Wedge said, “The themes were more about connections between people and finding things that we don’t realize are there, because I think that it’s emotionally satisfying to discover that someone’s been thinking about you, or somebody helped behind the scenes, or when you’re in trouble, somebody comes through that you didn’t expect to hear from.” He shared that he personally feels a type of magical presence when he walks into forests and just stands there for a moment. One goal of the Epic movie was to try to express that feeling in a fantasy form. “You feel the silence, you feel the strength, you see the leaf growing, the birds flitting around.” Ultimately, Mr. Wedge really wants viewers to experience, respect, and spend some time out in nature.
Does the Epic movie live up to Chris Wedge’s hopes? You can answer that question yourself because Epic opens in theaters today (May 24th). I highly recommend taking children ages 6 and up to go and see it.
You can also “get social” with Epic by:
-Liking Epic on Facebook
-Following @EpicTheMovie on Twitter #EpicTheMovie
-Watching Epic videos on YouTube
-Following Epic on Instagram
{Thanks to 20th Century Fox for inviting Mom in the City to the EPIC premiere and press junket.}