Chris Sanders (Lilo & Stitch, How To Train Your Dragon, Beauty And The Beast) is no stranger to feature film animation. He spoke to Creative Screenwriting Magazine about adapting Peter Brown’s The Wild Robot book, the first in the trilogy, into a movie. We kicked off our conversation with building the world for the story.

Creating the world of The Wild Robot includes science fiction spaceships, the remote island inhabited by wild animals, and the future scapes that had a distinct look and feel. “We were very fortunate that with the Puss in the Boots, The Last Wish, and with The Bad Guys, Dreamworks had made some huge strides in getting a more illustrated look on screen. We were leveraging off of that, but pushing it further.”

The style was inspired by Japanese animator and Studio Ghibli animator Hayao Miyazaki and Tyrus Wong’s ‘paintbrush’ styling in Bambi. “These can only really be achieved by a human hand,” says Sanders.

Writing The Story

Since large parts of The Wild Robot doesn’t rely on dialogue, the scene descriptions and action had to be accurately depicted on the page. We asked Sanders about his approach to this.

Chris Sanders

“I stay economical because I want a lot of blank space on the page. I want a screenplay to read quickly. So it’s about striking a balance.”  Sanders spent considerable time rewriting many “little blocks of description because they felt too big. Can I squeeze that down? Can I find better language? Can I find more descriptive and interesting, more poetic ways of describing things?”

The writer/ director describes the process akin to “writing poetry” to ensure an emotional response from the reader so they feel what he and the characters feel.

[More:Dean DeBlois Talks Lilo & Stitch & How To Train Your Dragon]

The first act of The Wild Robot covers a lot of plot exposition ground. A typhoon causes a Universal Dynamics cargo ship to lose six ROZZUM robots which wash up on an uninhabited forest island. Only ROZZUM “Roz” Unit 7134 (Lupita Nyong’o) survives and is accidentally activated by wildlife. However, her long-range transponder is damaged so she can’t signal for help.

Initially, Roz frightens the animals and injures herself while trying to help them. She learns their language, but fails to find anyone who needs her services. While trying to signal for retrieval, Roz is struck by lightning and attacked by animals. While trying to escape from an aggressive grizzly bear, she accidentally destroys a goose nest, killing the parents and all the eggs except for one, Brightbill (Kit Connor).

Sanders states that the opening act was originally much more detailed on the page than what appears on screen as he found his story. The original first draft contained scenes at a Universal Dynamics factory where the ROZZUMS were being built. The shooting draft opened on ROZZUM 7134’s learning processor given that she’s a learning robot.

“The original draft felt over-described and heavy, and we started paring it back until we realized that we were on the threshold of starting it as Roz began, so that the audience would learn along with her. They would never be ahead of her,” notes Sanders.

The storm scene was difficult to write because there were so many human voices in it. “We wanted people to know it was a storm, a ship and a crash without showing any of it.”

In Peter Brown’s original story, Roz leaves the island, but more on her own terms. The film version of The Wild Robot sees  Roz taking a more convoluted path home because Chris Sanders didn’t want to assume there would be any sequels. He actually wrote two endings – one where Roz returns to the place where she was built and one where she stays on the island. After presenting both options to Dreamworks executives, they quickly decided that Roz should leave the island.

“That was exciting to me, because emotionally, that was a heavier version of the story. It had a lot more consequences in its scale and worthiness.”

Sanders also realized that Roz’s departure would disappoint audiences after all her adventures on the island. “I want people to feel good. So the next challenge was to write an ending and change it just enough so that people felt like the story had concluded and there was a balance to it.”

Roz becomes a surrogate mother to Brightbill.  “There are quite a few people that wanted Roz to say, ‘You can call me mom, rather than that you can call me Roz.’ We recorded it, but I felt that the symmetry of, ‘You can call me Roz’was the right way to go.” The story would be trying too hard to make its point if they stayed with the former.

Roz isn’t Brightbill’s biological mother and realizes his need to be with his own kind. In one scene in the middle of the film, While Brightbill is embarking on a migration, he asks Roz if she’ll be there when he returns and she says, “No. I’m glad you’re going to where you belong.” Then she offers him a boost knowing that he doesn’t really need one. That actfills her with great joy.

This emotional exchange was largely done without much dialogue, but it had to balance Roz’s growing attachment to Brightbill with his need to fly away.

Who Are Roz And Fink?

Roz and Fink (Pedro Pascal) have very different ways of processing the world. Roz is a robot and Fink is a fox. Roz operates via logical instructions and Fink operates from his crafty gut instinct.

Fink (Pedro Pascal) and Roz (Lupita Nyong’o) Phtoo courtesy of Dreamworks Animation

“Roz has a bit of a neurodivergent way of looking at the world. She has a very structured way of seeing things, but she’s got this unrelenting kindness making her a little bit blind to certain things. She doesn’t really have an agenda beyond going home. So, when Fink is telling her the rules of the island, the survival of the fittest – ‘If you aren’t completely selfish in this world, you don’t see another day on this island,’ he puts it in terms of her programming.”

Fink befriends Roz instantly in the book after she rescues him, but in the film, he initially wants to kill her. Sanders allowed Fink time to change his attitude toward Roz because otherwise, it would have been too easy. “We had to go back and earn their relationship.”

Sanders rescues Fink in the film and he runs off. “The difficult part was finding a way to have him reintroduce himself to the story, to her storyline. And so we had him lurking and watching her, confused about what she’s doing before he introduces himself when he sees an opportunity to take advantage.” Fink is never really a villain, but more of an irritant. He helps her understand the ways of the world and the perils of excessive kindness.

When Chris Sanders discussed the theme of The Wild Robot with Peter Sanders, “As he was writing the story, the thought that was going through his head as a guiding principle was the idea that kindness can be a survival skill or a strategy.” This is the North Star of the movie.