This morning, Universal Pictures and DreamWorks Animation unveiled the title and full cast for their holiday 2023 release, Trolls Band Together. The third outing in the popular franchise will be released on Nov. 17.
The colorful musical is directed by Walt Dohrn, who also helmed the previous two Trolls movies. Trolls World Tour’s head of story Tim Heitz is co-director, and Gina Shay also returns as producer. Justin Timberlake and Anna Kendrick return to the voice cast. Eric André (Sing 2), Kid Cudi (Don’t Look Up), Daveed Diggs (Hamilton), Troye Sivan (Boy Erased), Camila Cabello (Cinderella), Amy Schumer (Life After Beth), Andrew Rannells (Big Mouth), RuPaul Charles (RuPaul’s Drag Race), Zosia Mamet (The Flight Attendant), Zooey Deschanel (New Girl), Christopher Mintz-Plasse (Promising Young Woman) and Kenan Thompson (SNL) round up the fun cast.
Here’s the official plotline:
“After two films of true friendship and relentless flirting, Poppy (Anna Kendrick) and Branch (Justin Timberlake) are now officially, finally, a couple (#broppy)! As they grow closer, Poppy discovers that Branch has a secret past. He was once part of her favorite boyband phenomenon, BroZone, with his four brothers: Floyd (Golden Globe nominated electropop sensation Troye Sivan), John Dory (Eric André; Sing 2), Spruce (Grammy winner Daveed Diggs; Hamilton) and Clay (Grammy winner Kid Cudi; Don’t Look Up). BroZone disbanded when Branch was still a baby, as did the family, and Branch hasn’t seen his brothers since.
But when Branch’s bro Floyd is kidnapped for his musical talents by a pair of nefarious pop-star villains—Velvet (Emmy winner Amy Schumer;Trainwreck) and Veneer (Grammy winner and Tony nominee Andrew Rannells; The Book of Mormon)—Branch and Poppy embark on a harrowing and emotional journey to reunite the other brothers and rescue Floyd from a fate even worse than pop-culture obscurity.”
DreamWorks’ first 2023 movie is Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken (voiced by Lana Condor, Toni Collette and Jane Fonda) which is set for release on June 30.
We had a chance to chat with director Walt Dohrn and producer Gina Shay about their third Trolls adventure. Here is what they told us!
Animation Magazine: So, congrats on the very colorful Trolls Band Together trailer. It looked so energetic and packed with fun. Can you tell us when you started planning this third outing?
Gina Shay: The idea for this movie actually came about right after the first Trolls movie. We felt like it was important to explore the characters’ family tree story, so we can explore it in the upcoming sequels, because that would reveal so much more about our lead characters if we delve into their past. So, in this in this movie we decided that we’d reveal that Branch house four brothers with whom he used to be in a band as a kid. Then, there comes a time when they can’t reach their family harmony, so they end up breaking up;
We’ve have cast his brothers as Eric Andre, Troye Sivan, Daveed Diggs and Kid Cudi, so we have this incredible new like comedic engine in the movie where these brothers who haven’t seen each other in 20 years have to get the band back together and save their brother Floyd.
Walt Dohrn: That idea came pretty early, probably about a year before Trolls World Tour was released. Gina and I I got together and start talking about some ideas we’ve been throwing around about where the movie should go. So we just started pitching stuff to the studio and getting feedback. By the time Trolls World Tour was released we had a pretty solid idea of what we wanted to do.
It looks like you’re continuing to up the ante with your visual style and color choices?
Walt: So the trailer gives just a small taste of what’s to come. I think we really started to learn that the audience really embraces these psychedelic and surreal aspects of the movie. We just love that, so we thought well the more they accept that, the further we are allowed out to kind of push out the visual canvas of the movie. We’re big fans of psychedelic animated cinema like The Yellow Submarine and Fantasia. It’s that was really fun to be able to use all kinds of different animation styles with shadow puppets, more stop motion, I think puppets in general are a big influence for us. So, stylistically we got to stretch our wings a little bit.
Gina: We want to be unexpected and give our audience who’ve grown with us who are now entering college things to really dig into and enjoy.
Walt: Yes, the sleep-deprived college student, we deliver for them. And it was also great to feature some 2D animated sequences as well. That was the beginning of my career (SpongeBob SquarePants, Dexter’s Laboratory) and Gina’s career as well (Pooh’s Grand Aventure, South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut). Yes, we’ve been around a long time, and to be able to do some 2D and weave it into the narrative in a fun way was just fantastic.
We’ve been getting great visual energy and fun animation styles from DreamWorks over the past couple of years. Did the success of those movies give you more freedom as well?
Walt: Yes, as we’re coming up with these stories, there’s a little bit more room and a lot of support. The style is dictated by the story we’re trying to tell as well as the sensibilities of the leads of each movie. There’s just a lot of support from the studio. Some of it comes from the marketplace, which gets pretty crowded since there’s a lot of animated movies competing for audiences’ attentions. I think we’re allowed to kind of make it in such a way that it stands out and is more unique than the other films. There are so many great styles out there, from Puss in Boots: The Last Wish and The Bad Guys to Spider-Verse, of course. I really feels like it’s a golden age of animation again.
Gina: I feel like the Trolls’ world allows us even more room to play because we can go to unexpected lands. Our movie is a road picture and there are always surprises everywhere, so there are psychedelic worlds, and we could basically really use our imaginations a lot. A lot of the look was originally based on a DIY aspect and was kind of spun out from there, so it feels cohesive.
Walt: We liked that handmade feel of the original film so we kind of push on that a little more in this film. We live in a world in which there are so many computer-animated things that emulate reality. We’re like we’ll do it in this other way.
Gina: I mean our film looks like nothing out there!
Now, the important stuff. What kind of astounding, Earth-shattering facts were you able to learn as you did your extensive research on boy bands!
Walt: I was a little bit too old for boy bands ,and I think I might have been in my own sleep- deprived college student days in the ‘90s, so I had to I had to learn a lot. Of course, we have Justin Timberlake to help us on that since he’s the number-one expert on that subject.
Gina: Justin had to go back in time too, so that was fun, and a little bit emotional too for him, I imagine .
Walt: What I like about the engine of the boy band was we try to walk that line where we celebrate the nostalgia and the aesthetics, but we also satirize it too. We poke fun at the whole phenomena and I think that healthy balance of the two things really create something fun.
So, what do you hope audiences will get out of your movie this holiday season?
Walt: We want them to have fun first and go have a good time. I think the world is such a challenging place to live in these days, and it just gets more and more challenging. So we hope this movie offers you an opportunity to go to another world, have a good time, dance and laugh and maybe cry a little bit. And we also have great values and messages in the movie.
Gina: We hope everyone will leave the theater wanting to connect a little bit more with their family in a meaningful way.
Walt: Or address traumas from the past with glitter!
You can watch the trailer below:
