‘The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild’ director John C Donkin and producer Lori Forte talk about possible future films – Times of India ►

In an interview with ETimes, the director and producer spilled the beans about their latest prehistoric tale, releasing the film for online streaming and their plans for the future of this billion-dollar franchise.

It’s been 20 years since we first saw Manny, Sid and Diago band together, did you think you would be making Ice Age films two whole decades down the line?

Lori Forte: When we made that first ‘Ice Age’ movie, I didn’t think we’d make it past that. So needless to say, it has been an exciting journey.

John C Donkin: I didn’t necessarily think we would come to this place, but in the end, I am not surprised because everyone loves these characters so much.

Who inspires your characters? Do you write characters with certain voices or people in mind?

Lori: A lot of it is the writers. We come up with the characters, then we discuss with the writers their personality traits. But, I don’t think there is anyone we’d look to, to create these characters. We have really smart, funny and innovative writers. We start with the seeds of the idea and then we develop and keep developing them until they become full force characters.

John: I think we are inspired by aspects of the characters. Especially when we are developing new characters, a lot of it comes from the actors and actresses playing the role. During the workshops, we work out the traits of the character. That’s the beauty of animation. It takes time to put them together and we can develop the character as we go. We had a starting point, but it evolved as we went through.

Ice Age is a billion-dollar franchise, tell us what lead to the decision to have a digital release of the film?

John: I don’t know who would have made that specific decision, but it is somewhat timely. We’ve seen an explosion of content on digital media and it’s the evolution that has been felt both in animation and live-action that there is a need for content to be available at home. For me, it felt timely partly because of the pandemic. Everybody is watching TV in the comfort of their own home. But, we didn’t think of making this specifically for streaming vs the theatre. We wanted the movie to feel like it had the scope and scale to stand up in a theatre. In fact, we saw it projected on the big screen and it was amazing.

But, at the end of the day, we make these movies to be seen by as many people as possible because we want to share these stories. If this is the current vehicle, then I’m happy for it to be screened. I of course love the cinema and I hope that it comes out (in theatres) after the pandemic.

Lori: As John said, we didn’t set out to make it for streaming or theatrical. We set out to make hopefully a beautiful movie. We wanted it to be as lush and rich as our Ice Age movies. We wanted it to be a new chapter to the Ice Age story and we wanted to have the spirit and feel and richness of an Ice Age film.

How does ‘The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild’ set the course for future Ice Age in the works, maybe?

Lori: Hopefully the audience will respond and we’ll get to do more and more. I have no end to ideas for stories, new characters, new stories for the characters to watch how they have grown and changed over time, so there is no end to them.

‘The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild’, continues the hilarious escapades of the beloved sub-zero heroes thirsting for adventure as they go about creating more prehistoric pandemonium.

The film that debuted on an OTT platform features the voices of actors Simon Pegg, Utkarsh Ambudkar, Justina Machado, Vincent Tong and Aaron Harris.