‘Spellbound’ Puts a Musical Twist on Fairy Tale Families

It’s Musicals Week at IndieWire. With “Wicked” about to sparkle over theaters, we’re celebrating the best of the movie-musical genre. 

“Spellbound,” the second feature from John Lasseter-led Skydance Animation, offers a new twist on the modern fairy tale: It allegorically explores divorce through magical and often-adventure-filled family therapy. Here, the king (Javier Bardem) and queen (Nicole Kidman) of mythical Lumbria have been transformed into monsters, forcing their only child, teen Princess Ellian (Rachel Zegler), to embark on a journey to break the spell and reconcile their differences.

“Spellbound” experienced a compelling evolution under director Vicky Jenson (“Shrek”). It first began as “Split,” a non-fairy tale about worlds at war, scripted by Linda Woolverton (“Beauty and the Beast”). Then, when Lasseter took over, it became a Disney-esque musical fairy tale, built around EGOT winner Alan Menken’s score and songs co-written with lyricist Glenn Slater (“Tangled”).

“Everything fell much more into place to make this brand-new fairy tale, told in the classic way, and what felt like a very modern story,” Jenson told IndieWire. “And it was wonderful to work with [Lasseter] to pare it down, going for what’s unique and special about the movie first, and then putting some cool elements back in if they supported the story.

“While breaking it down, we worked with psychologist/therapist JoAnne Pedro-Carroll, [‘Putting Children First’],” Jenson continued. “She helped us be true to families going through this kind of ordeal, and how parents can forget that they are parents because they’re so caught up in their whole animosity to one another. That helped us shape that whole second act of what this family needs to go through to find their way back to each other. It was something both John and I used as a North star for the whole movie and the idea of a teenager as a coming-of-age story.”

“Spellbound” is unconventional in both its themes and musical structure. For example, the early showstopper, “The Way It Was Before,” atypically features Ellian yearning for the past instead of looking forward on the night of her birthday: It’s become unbearable running the kingdom on her own, acting as a parent to her mother and father, whose monstrous transformation has not been revealed to their subjects.

‘Spellbound’Skydance Animation/Netflix

The song starts in a dark part of the castle that seems frozen in time, before traveling outside, where Ellian recalls a montage of iconic childhood moments amidst the beautiful scenery. Skydance Animation Madrid creates a Lumbria (production designed by Brett Nystul) with Spanish and Moorish influences, such as domed rooftops, arches, mosaics, and topiary.

“It’s fun that she tells us, ‘Wouldn’t it be great to have parents to just be annoyed at again?,'” Jenson said. “A family that’s gone. And the song was the first thing that Alan and Glenn wrote together for the movie. And it struck us all as not only just lovely and perfect for this moment, but it seemed to transcend it because you could hear that song at a graduation, a wedding, a memorial.”

Ellian asks the Moon and Sun Oracles (Tituss Burgess and Nathan Lane) to help her break the spell, but they tell her that only her parents can do that. She thinks that’s ridiculous and the situation is hopeless. “We needed to make sure that we weren’t messaging kids the wrong thing,” added Jenson. “And it’s very tricky because you want your lead character to fix things, to put the world right again. That’s not for her to do that. But she can reclaim her right to be who she is.”

Another unconventional aspect is that there’s no villain. Instead, “[Ellian] gets to sing a song that acts in a way like a villain song, but it’s her venting her well-founded and completely justified anger,” said Jenson.

This occurs in an enchanted forest where Ellian yells at her parents for fighting so much — before she’s nearly swallowed up by a ribbon-like black tornado called the Darkness. But she’s saved by her father, who speaks for the first time. Thus begins the healing process, in which the parents relearn how to be human again.

“Javier connected to the movie the first time I showed him just really rough storyboard sketches that we put together in a reel,” she added. “We had a few of the songs in demo form. I just showed it to him so he could feel the movie from where it starts with ‘My parents are monsters,’ and the emotions of ‘The Way It Was Before,’ and ultimately to the parents and how they sing to her, and the moment when young Ellian takes his hand and says, ‘But what about all of this? You want to leave all this memory behind?’ As soon as he saw that, he said, ‘I am in, that’s your movie right there.'”

“Spellbound” starts streaming Friday, November 22, on Netflix.