Original-Cin Q&A: Directors of Night of the Zoopocalypse Deliver Clive Barker for Kids

By Bonnie Laufer

Night of the Zoopocalypse is a new animated comedy-horror film directed by storyboard artists Ricardo Curtis and Rodrigo Perez-Castro inspired by a concept from horror master Clive Barker.

Set in a zoo, it follows a group of animals trying to survive a zombie outbreak where an extraterrestrial virus carried by a meteor turns several creatures into slobbering mutant zombies.

Bonnie Laufer spoke with directors Curtis and Perez-Castro about working on the project together.

Night of the Zoopocalypse opens in theatres on March 7.

CLICK HERE to see Bonnie’s fun interview with voice talent Scott Thompson and Gabbi Kosmidis who play Ash the Ostrich and Gracie the Wolf

ORIGINAL-CIN: When I first heard the film was from the mind of Clive Barker, I was in!  Yes, it has a little bit of a scary element to it, but it's a family film aimed at kids, so you have to find a balance between the scares and the comedy. What was that challenge like?

Ricardo Curtis

RICARDO CURTIS: That was actually one of the biggest challenges that we faced.  We wanted to go in there and really build up that tension, that thing where it's like you're feeling that heavy tension and you don't know what's going to happen next, but you want to get it to a point where it's enjoyable and then let it go.

That's where we brought the comedy in. So there was a lot of skill, there's a lot of timing, there's a lot of things that we had to do to make that work. Finding that balance was key to making this work, so we did rely a lot on the script. The way that we did the design of the film really allowed us to kind of play with the animated content.

For example when we brought in the character of Poot (Christina Nova), who was the pygmy hippopotamus, that's the character in which the youngest members of the audience can relate to and feel safe.

Rodrigo Perez-Castro

RODRIGO PEREZ-CASTRO: It all goes back to our own childhoods. We wanted to give the kids an experience similar to what we experienced when we were growing up watching movies like Gremlins and Ghostbusters.  Movies that really gave you that spooky feeling, but they were also fun to watch, and they were really funny too.

So that was the tone that we were going for and I think there were challenges there, but it was fun to figure out. Just the fact that the movie takes place in just one night, we knew that meant that we had to make it visually interesting. We wanted to make it very colorful, very saturated and bright, which still plays with the spookiness and the atmosphere of the film, but, but it's also usually very interesting for a family film.

O-C:  I’m sure the added challenge was focusing on one night in this zoo as opposed to a longer timeline.

RC: Yes, absolutely. Something like that actually is a challenge. But throughout this whole film, challenges like that actually made the film better.

We were able to be compact in the way that we told that story because we're not going to have days and weeks to develop all these characters, and it's an important piece of the story. So we have lots of really interesting characters that we do have to develop.

RP-C: It's all about what these characters go through together.  When you think about the original Night of the Living Dead, for example, they're just in a house and there's this character that you really get to know and it's because of what they have to face challenges that they encounter. 

So we really just took some mini inspiration from those movies, knowing that we had limited time when it comes to  real time living in that world.

O-C: Did you have any of the voice cast in mind while writing it, because your lead Gabbi Kosmidis is virtually a newcomer and she anchors the whole film.

 RP-C: We auditioned a lot of people to voice our lead, Gracie.  When we heard Gabbi’s voice, we immediately knew she would be perfect. I think when it comes to the character of Dan the Mountain Lion, we definitely had David Harbour in mind.

RC: David was considered very early in the process because we knew that we needed the sort of voice that had to have heft.  We needed a deep voice, making Dan feel like he was bigger and stronger and David had that. 

We had other characters which were written and developed in design, which evolved a little bit, and some of them even evolved when we were actually on stage recording. So, Paul Sun-Hyung Lee who plays Felix, we had a version of that film where his character was supposed to be the one that was unlikable.  Once we started working with Paul he did a  completely different version of what we had initially envisioned.

We liked what he did so much, we just threw ours out because his idea was just so much better and we ended up developing it on stage.  For the Ostrich, Ash, Scott Thompson’s character, we had an idea what this character would be like. But then when he came and recorded he made it so much better.

O-C: I would imagine that when you have someone on board as funny as Scott you would let him improvise as much as possible? 

RP-C: There were a  few things here and there. Scott, of course, is a professional, so yes, he had the script and  gave us exactly what was on the script but once we got that he went a bit crazy. We have hours and hours of hilarious behind the scenes footage for most of the cast.

O-C: Did working on this make you think differently about zoos?

RP-C: We definitely had conversations about how to portray the zoo. Because I think one of the first experiences that a kid has in terms of meeting animals and experiencing certain animals that you cannot really meet in the real world does come mostly from the zoo, even if zoos come with all this baggage.

But there are so many zoos that have great conservation programs. But in this film, we wanted to leave that question a little open, for audiences to make up their mind about how you feel about it.  In the end we just want everyone to have a good time.

RC: We talked about it in the beginning, and how we felt about zoos. But in the end, you forget about the whole zoo thing pretty quickly.

They just become  characters. It becomes like, Escape from New York, it just so happens to be in a zoo. So you have characters who happen to be animals who just happen to be in a place that they can't get out of, which happens to be a very perfect backdrop for a zombie film.