‘Nimona’ Team Talk Quest To Complete Film Against The Odds & Surprise ‘Star Wars’ Villain Who Sparked The Original Character – Annecy

Melanie Goodfellow
·8 min read
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The long-awaited animated feature adaptation of ND Stevenson’s cult graphic novel Nimona enjoyed a triumphant world premiere at the Annecy International Film Festival on Wednesday evening ahead of its launch on Netflix on June 30.

Set in a futuristic medieval world, the story revolves around the titular Nimona (Chloë Grace Moretz), a mischievous, shape-shifting teenager with a violent streak, and Ballister Blackheart (Riz Ahmed), an up and coming knight of humble origins.

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When Blackheart is framed for a heinous crime and is forced to go on the run, Nimona becomes an unlikely saviour, initially because she believes he is guilty and thinks he is a kindred spirit.

Blackheart is determined to prove his innocence, especially in the eyes of his long-time soul mate, fellow knight Ambrosius Goldenloin.

The work is adapted from Stevenson’s award-winning graphic novel of the same name, which in turn was developed from a webcomic about a shape-shifting creature he first imagined as a child and developed further as a teenager to process feelings of not fitting in.

For Stevenson and the film’s co-directors Nick Bruno and Troy Quane, the Annecy kick-off marked the culmination of a seven-year journey to adapt the original work.

The rights for Nimona were originally acquired by 20th Century Fox Animation in 2015 and the plan was for its subsidiary Blue Sky Studios to produce an animated feauture adaptation with Patrick Osborne at the helm.

The Walt Disney Company acquired Fox in 2019 and for a time the production continued as before, with Spies In Disguise duo Bruno and Quane joining the production team in 2020.

However, as the pandemic continued to bite, Disney announced it was closing Blue Sky Studios in 2021, effectively shutting down the production.

Former Blue Sky Co-Presidents Andrew Millstein and Robert Baird, refused to give up on the film and with producer Julie Zackary started looking for fresh partners, finding a saviour in Annapurna CEO Megan Ellison.

London-based DNEG Animation also agreed to come on board as a partner rather than as a traditional service provider to help complete the animation.

The animation found a home at Netflix in the spring of 2022.

Deadline sat down with Stevenson, Bruno and Quane in Annecy as the film finally connected with an audience for the first time.

DEADLINE: ND, Nimona grew out of your own personal experiences. Was it hard to hand her over to another creative team?

ND STEVENSON: Nimona is a really personal character to me so it was definitely hard to hand that over but it was also really cool an idea that had started as a webcomic could potentially reach a wider group of people.

I just wanted her to be right. It was my reason for telling the story in the first place. This is the kind of character that I really wanted to see and didn’t see ever. That’s where I stood my ground the most, or pushed back when I felt that it  wasn’t the character that I knew.

DEADLINE: Aside from your personal story, were there any fictional characters who served as inspiration for Nimona?

STEVENSON: I could talk about this for hours. Zam Wesell. She’s an extremely minor character in Star Wars that I really imprinted on as an eight year old. She’s a bounty hunter who dies five minutes into the second prequel Attack of the Clones. No-one remembers her and my life’s mission has been to make everyone care about her.

She’s a shapeshifter, which doesn’t come up that much in the movie, but that was something that I just really latched on to. I wanted her to live, so I came up with a version of the story where she did and she became the main character when I was at home playing with my action figures. That character grew among me and my friends and my siblings as I built this whole parallel world. I think that started my love of shapeshifters… I was also always a big fan of Carrie Kelly in the Batman comics.

DEADLINE: Troy and Nick, the production had been through quite a journey by the time you picked up the director’s baton. Did you build on the first iteration or start from scratch ?

NICK BRUNO: When Troy and I came on, Patrick and Jeff Turley had already done a great job with a lot of the visuals on the film. There’s a lot of really great stuff to explore in the graphic novel and they had explored a bunch of those routes.

But the story reels were having a hard time connecting with the story. We came in with an outside perspective. ND had created this super unique character and it was very clear to us, that the world and the themes should be built around this character, but the film wasn’t embracing Nimona at that point. So it was easy for us, who hadn’t struggled on that forever, to come in and say let’s tip the scales into Nimona and that’s when it clicked.

TROY QUANE: The tricky thing is that right from the very beginning, Nimona introduces herself as a sidekick, but no way is she a sidekick. She drives the story. As Nick said, it helped that we came in with a different perspective. It was like we came over to a friend’s house and somebody gave us a box of really cool action figures and said, ‘Can you make up a story with this ?’ because a lot of the visuals were already on a path at that point.

STEVENSON: I’d seen other versions of the story that hadn’t centered on Nimona as much. She was more of an accessory and it just never felt right.  It wasn’t true to the heart of the story. As soon as it became truly Nimona’s story that’s when everything really started clicking and picking up steam.

DEADLINE : Given all the challenges facing the production from the pandemic to the closure of Blue Sky Studios, why do you think people were so determined to complete the film?

BRUNO: That’s an easy one. It’s because of the character of Nimona. That’s what kept us fighting for it. That and the universal side of the story, which is a love letter to all those who’ve ever felt misunderstood. Nimona represents a very specific group of people, the LGBTQ+ community. When we came on, we were initially telling a story about acceptance, but through Nimona, it’s more about getting to know people. That’s the lesson you learn in the graphic novel and the movie. It’s also just fun. It’s really fun. It’s very sincere. It’s ridiculously crazy, and it’s a movie that you’ve got to fight for.

QUANE: Even though Nimona speaks specifically to certain groups, it’s also universal. The universal connection that we all have to the story is that it makes us realize individual struggles are something we all share.

DEADLINE: How did you decide to tackle the LGBTQ+ themes and characters in the film ?

QUANE: It’s the DNA of the entire story and who the characters are. I wouldn’t say that is what the story is about. No characters are struggling with that aspect.  We very purposely at the beginning made that choice… a lot of times, films and stories in that space are about struggling with identity. Nimona comes in very self-assured about who she is and what she wants.  It was just an inexorable part of those characters. It’s just part and parcel of the story that ND put together and created in the graphic novel. But the story is about being seen, finding acceptance and finding your place in the world.

DEADLINE: ND, Do you think youngsters are more open to the fact that there are different types of identity than when you were growing up?

STEVENSON: The comment is interesting because I was not out when I made the comics and wouldn’t be out for years. Being raised in a repressed environment, as Ballister and Goldenloin are in the book, there’s a lot of that in there. It was before I started to figure out gender stuff but those themes are all through the book in a way that I didn’t even fully comprehend at the time.

The world and the conversation have changed, with the story going from being a webcomic, to becoming an animated movie, and originally with a studio. Initially, I was wondering is this going to make it into the final cut. It seemed  like the answer was going to be pretty solidly ‘No’. I had fought similar battles on other stuff I was working on. And then eventually, I  saw a cut of the movie, and it was just a part of the movie. And it looked completely effortless. This was many iterations in. It was just there. And I don’t know what fights y’all had to fight for that, but I never saw them. For me. It looked like it was the easiest thing in the world. It was so natural, nothing was forced, nothing was wedged in, or plastered over top of something else. It was just a very natural part of the movie that defines the characters personalities and their wants and their drives.

DEADLINE: Do you think this film could have been made at Disney?

QUANE: All we can say is that the movie was shut down for financial reasons.

DEADLINE: There were reports at the time that Disney didn’t approve of some of the LGBTQ+ elements and attempted to censor a same-sex kiss scene…

QUANE: Was there consternation about certain elements of the film? There were definitely conversations. I can’t speak to what would or wouldn’t have happened in a fictional world. But yeah, of course, there there were conversations, there are always conversations when you’re trying to do something that’s honest.

DEADLINE: With Nimona finally making its debut in Annecy, what’s next?

STEVERSON: I’m working on a two book series of novels that is not announced yet. That’s all I can say about it for now. It’s based on an even older story that predates Nimona from my teenage years. I’m excited and terrified to be branching into a new form of storytelling. I’m still developing Lumberjanes [acquired by HBO Max in 2020] and figuring out that world as well.

BRUNO : We’ve got some some tricks up our sleeve we can’t announce yet either but there are some cool things happening.

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