The Angry Birds Movie, based on the much-loved video game, was a huge box-office hit ($350million on a $73million budget) when it released in 2016. Ahead of its premiere on Indian TV (Sunday, Sony Pix, 1pm and 9pm), t2 caught up with director Clay Kaytis, who was the head of Walt Disney Animation for years and is all set to direct an Angry Birds sequel, out in 2019.

What was your experience working on The Angry Birds Movie and did you think it would become so big at the box office?
We definitely hoped it would be and I had a great time making it. We worked on it for two-and-a-half years and I was quite surprised to see how well it was received in India. I visited India in 2012 and I met a lot of animators and I know that people there are quite clued into animation movies. 

A lot of work for big Holly animation films happens in Indian studios. What was your impression of the animation scene here? 
Animators are a very specific type of people… I can almost spot them in the middle of the street! (Laughs) Anywhere you go in the world, there’s a brotherhood of animators… we are all the same, kindred type of people... good people at heart, they love their work, they love to have a laugh. That never changes wherever I go. 
When I went to India, I met this set of animators who worked on the Tiger for Life of Pi and they won the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects, so that shows the kind of quality that’s coming out of India. Fantastic bunch of creative people.

What do you think it is about animation films that make them so popular globally?
I think it’s because a film like Angry Birds can talk to any nationality. Animation, as a genre, really travels wide because it can be adapted into different languages and local celebrities end up lending their voices to the characters. People love to have fun and laugh and they know that’s kind of guaranteed in an animation film.
 
What was the idea behind converting a much-loved video game into a film?
We saw a lot of potential, mainly because of the number of people who play the game… I believe it’s the most-downloaded video game ever, and came with a built-in awareness. Our goal was to make a movie that incorporated as many aspects of the game as possible and also introduce other threads… one didn’t really need to know the game to be able to watch the film. 

Frozen to Tangled to Wreck-It Ralph, you’ve worked on some of the biggest animation films in the last decade. How would you place The Angry Birds Movie in your vast repertoire?
It’s a lot more special since it was my directorial debut (smiles). Making any kind of movie is a lot of hard work. I worked with Disney for many years and when I left to do my own thing, I carried forward the work ethic. Being a director is tougher than being an animator or even heading an animation department because as a director, you are responsible for a whole lot more. The pressure of making the right choices all day is tremendous. 

Is animation something you always wanted to do?
I’ve done it for about 24 years now (smiles), but I never grew up thinking about it. In fact, I never thought I could become an animator because it was something very talented people did. But when I was 20, I decided to take an animation class. I fell in love with it. I had no previous talent in drawing or animating, but I took a chance and when I found out how fun it was, I decided to dedicate my life to it. It’s actually a career of more than two decades based on a hunch (smiles).

Were there any early animation films that influenced you?
I think Aladdin (Disney, 1992) was a film that made me feel animation was cool. There were so many pop-culture jokes and Robin Williams (voice of the Genie) was amazing. 

You are all set to direct your first live-action film. Any jitters about a new medium?
It’s a film called The Lunch Witch with Amblin, which is Steven Spielberg’s company. We start filming next year. It’s a different space from animation, but the film is a fantasy so I am hoping it won’t be too tough for me. In the end, it’s the same kind of creative strategy and ideology that goes into making films, no matter what kind it is.

Priyanka Roy