‘Bewitched’, his new and ambitious animated film with Spanish “talent”, arrives on Netflix

‘Spellbound’ the new animated film Skydance Studios is now available in Netflix. The film, directed by Vicky Jenson (‘Shrek’, ‘The Shark Scarer’), has had a large part of its production at the company’s Madrid headquarters, thus reflecting the good moment of the genre in Spain and the “talent” to carry out these projects.

“The entire script part has been done in the United States and everything else, the entire art and 3D part, has been done in Madrid“explained Álvaro Figuero Espadas, co-producer of the film, in a meeting with the media at the Skydance headquarters. This animation studio located in the Spanish capital has been the epicenter of the film’s developmentin which the company’s headquarters located in Los Angeles, Connecticut and the United Kingdom have also participated.

“We had the idea of ​​it being a little Mediterranean but we also added touches from other places. In the end it is a fantastic world, we wanted you to not be able to put it on the map. And in the temporal aspect as well, that historically you had an idea but that it didn’t reveal too much,” commented Guillermo Ramírez, art director and character designer of the film.

The production level of animated films has advanced by leaps and bounds, involving more and more artists within their teams and allowing changes to be introduced practically until the final moments of development. The photography and lighting, character design, special effects and animation departments they worked together to carry out a project among the 1,000 people that make up Skydance, of which 700 work at the Madrid headquarters.

Some facilities located in the Arganzuela neighborhood in Madrid. The organization of the Skydance building, spacious and bright in its central area, is similar to the way in which Pixar arranges the elements of its work spaces in Emeryville, to encourage collaboration and chance encounters among the workers.

“One of the great challenges is that we have gone from a linear, sequential way of producing to what is done now. The way of producing now is that the movie stays open until the end. That gives you spectacular creative power, because you can be making modifications almost until the last moment,” explained Miguel Pablos Contreras, director of photography for ‘Hechizados’.

“The day before I turned fifteen, Ellian (Rachel Zegler) should be celebrating the event like the worthy heir to the throne that she is. However, the determined daughter of the kings of Lumbria has a secret: a mysterious spell transformed his parents into monstersQueen Ellsmere (Nicole Kidman) and King Solon (Javier Bardem). When they escape from the palace, panic spreads throughout the kingdom and Ellian must undertake a risky mission to break the spell before it is too late. However, he soon realizes that, even if he succeeds, he will not be able to prevent his family from changing forever,” reads the official synopsis of ‘Bewitched’.

The agreement between the streaming service and the company will bring upcoming Skydance titles to Netflix, including ‘whole’which will premiere in 2025; Brad Bird’s new project, ‘Ray Gunn’; and a movie Jack and the Beanstalk by Rich Moore (‘Zootropolis’).