Nimona the Phoenix: The Miracle and Legacy of Blue Sky’s Last Production
Photos courtesy of Netflix, Roy Rochlin/Getty Images for Netflix Movies Features Blue Sky Studios
In the animation world, Blue Sky Studios was always an outlier. While Disney, Pixar and Dreamworks Animation all set up their primary headquarters in California, the Blue Sky founders planted their flag far away from any animation hubs. They made Ice Age (2002) in White Plains, New York, then moved in 2009 to an unassuming corporate park in Greenwich, Connecticut. It was there that many Blue Sky hits would be birthed, from the Rio movies to The Peanuts Movie (2015) and two more theatrical Ice Age sequels.
The studio’s fate changed in 2019, when The Walt Disney Company acquired 21st Century Fox, including Blue Sky Studios. Not long after, in March 2020, the COVID-19 lockdown sent all of the animators home to continue work on two in-progress Blue Sky projects: The Scrat Tales animated shorts series for Disney+ and the theatrical adaptation of ND Stevenson’s graphic novel Nimona.
With global box office losses due to the pandemic causing studio cost-cutting everywhere, Disney announced on February 9, 2021 that Blue Sky Studios would be dissolved. Scrat Tales was able to be finished by that spring, but Nimona, which featured the studio’s most progressive storytelling—about a shapeshifter who is labeled a monster and ostracized by the ruling powers—was “pencils down” with 90% of the story reels (detailed animatics of the major scenes in the movie) complete and 70% of layout done.
But then a miracle happened. Newly appointed directors Nick Bruno and Troy Quane, producers Karen Ryan and Julie Zackary, and recently enshrined Blue Sky co-presidents Andrew Millstein and Robert Baird made a plea to the Disney execs: Shop their completed work to outside studios to finish it. What ensued was a two-year creative odyssey to bring Blue Sky Studios’ final theatrical work to audiences and close out their creative legacy with one of their very best films.
An Inglorious End?
When Disney informed Blue Sky Studios of its impending closure in 2021, veteran screenwriter Robert L. Baird had only been overseeing the slate of films as co-president for two years. When he started, Nimona was about a year into development. From then on, everyone in-house had to weather the massive upheaval of new corporate ownership, a pandemic, and the shoe dropping on their cumulative fate.
“It’s still mind-boggling to me that you had to be making movies through this soup of uncertainty, where people were constantly wondering, ‘Are we okay?’” Baird tells Paste of those days at Blue Sky. “It just made everything exponentially hard because there was this undercurrent of anxiety that was coloring everything. Then, everybody got sent home to work on the movie during the pandemic, and then the studio was shuttered. And at that point, it was game over. The studio shut down, so it was pencils down on Nimona.”
For directors Nick Bruno and Troy Quane, who inherited the film from exiting director Patrick Osborne (Feast), they were coming off a disappointing experience trying to finish Spies in Disguise in the wake of the acquisition. Quane likened that process to being “kidney punched,” but they moved onto Nimona with a clear purpose.
“When you’ve got new overlords and they’re looking at all line items, you want to make sure that those line items are as good as possible,” Quane explains. “The surprise came because we all felt like we had accomplished the task. They’d given us 16 months to turn the movie around and we were actually on point to do that. But then this unfortunate thing called COVID hit and no one knew how to respond.”
At that time, there was a lot of emotion emanating from the social feeds of Blue Sky animators working on Nimona, who vilified Disney for shutting down Nimona for its LGBTQ themes. However, Baird paints the studio and their fellow Walt Disney Animation and Pixar brethren in a more sympathetic light. “They didn’t shut down the movie. They shut down the studio, and the movie was a victim of that studio shutting down,” he clarifies. “The leadership at Disney did not shut the studio down with any kind of happiness in their hearts. We had strong ties to Pixar and to Disney. It’s such a small industry where everybody has pretty much worked with everybody, so there was no happiness in doing this. [Disney] did not have to let the movie go. And they did. And they let us take it across the finish line.”
Baird says it was through his co-president Andrew Millstein’s long career and strong relationships within Disney Animation that the conversations were even had about potentially rescuing Nimona.
“There was definitely a sense of regret from within Disney that the studio was being shut down,” he assesses in hindsight. “And so I think there was emotion that was involved with the decision to say, ‘We understand how close you were to the finish line. If you can make it happen and can find somebody out there who is willing to take the project over, we support that.’ And obviously, with some financial strings attached.”
At the time, Nimona consisted of two completed sequences of animation (“Specifically, it was that busting out from the jail scene when the rhino was tearing through everything,” Bruno details. “And we had the two little girls in the flashback that was finished.”), five sequences in the process of being animated, and the entirety of the rest of the film as fleshed-out animatics.
“What you see in the movie today, we walked out of Blue Sky with 90+ percent of that same story,” Quane says. “When you’re making animation, that’s the hardest part. You’re always gonna have to figure out the problem solving of how to make it. But if you know what you’re trying to make, that’s the key. It’s a rare case when you feel like you’re ahead of the curve on that. We were seven months out and on schedule to wrap this thing when we were supposed to because we had the story.”
All of those materials made for some very strong pitch material to show other studios. “It was the easiest ‘dog and pony’ show because we just pressed play and said, ‘Do you want to make this?’” Quane describes. “We had all the designs so it was really amazing that way.”
Millstein, Baird and the directors then sent the reels out to anyone who showed interest. The animation industry was very aware of the project and the strength of the work Blue Sky had already produced.
“We had a set of reels and a fire to go out and make the transition from being buyers to being sellers,” Baird explains. “We were going into a world that just wasn’t ours. We were always in the business of developing internally and bringing directors into [us] where you have the whole pipeline, including distribution, when you’re at Disney / Pixar / Blue Sky. Suddenly, we have something we know is special, and we have to become sellers.”
Annapurna founder and CEO Megan Ellison got hold of Nimona and her fate was sealed. “She reached out after having watched the reels multiple times,” Baird remembers. “She expressed the kind of love for the story that we all had for the movie. It wasn’t lip service and it wasn’t somebody who just saw the business opportunity. This almost had very little to do with business, and was simply her saying, ‘I see myself in this story and this is where you should make it.’”
Bruno says they were stunned at her response. “It really was a passion project for her. This was a movie that she felt she needed as a kid. As soon as she got us going again, her one wish was, ‘Tell whatever stories you were not allowed to tell previously. Do whatever you feel like is going to make this story great. Lean into anything.’”
Millstein and Baird were tapped to run the new Annapurna Animation with the completion of Nimona as their first project, which would stream exclusively on Netflix. They essentially went from being a major animation studio to an indie studio outfit, Baird says, whittled down from 500 to 20.
“We had to restart everything,” Baird explains. “We had to start a new, small production company, and then rework everyone’s deals and bring them back into the fold. We lost people because they got scooped up by all these other studios. And through all of that, we tried not to raise false hopes. Even when we got the yes, there’s still all of the business that has to be worked out and the negotiations with Disney. We’re trying to say to the people, ‘We think this is good. Hold on! Don’t go anywhere!’”
The Nuts and Bolts of Starting Over
One of the saving graces for Nimona was that it had not been animated in the Blue Sky Studios’ next-gen proprietary software, Conduit. Because of that, the waste of having to entirely re-animate the film was never an issue. Plus, they could lean on the strong visual aesthetic established by former director Osborne, then fully developed by production designers Jeff Turley and Aidan Sugano.
“Suddenly, we’re in this new realm where we’re looking for a vendor studio that can actually deliver on what was created at Blue Sky, and who understood the movie,” Baird explains.
He credits Millstein and particularly producer Julie Zackary—who came from the vendor studio world of animation—as their primary guides as they went shopping for the right partners. “[Zackary] could sniff out if somebody is being genuine about what they can deliver and what they can’t,” Baird says. “And there was a combination of our group of directors and producers who together have a high level of emotional intelligence and business acumen.”
From there, world-renowned VFX and animation house DNEG came into view. “They saw the story we’re trying to tell and the most important thing for us was they bought into that,” Quane says of why they were chosen. “The technical stuff was hard because it’s a new pipeline. Nothing was shaking hands. We managed to bring in some of our models, but even those needed to be reworked. Their rigging system just didn’t line up, so what you see on the screen is, frame one, DNEG animation. So there were a lot of late nights and sacrifices of time and effort. But that’s the stuff you can muscle through and figure out. It was the fact that they knew the story. They believed in what we were trying to do with it. And they believed in how we were trying to do it.”
Bruno says they were especially impressed by the way DNEG was able to achieve a style with Nimona that evokes a sense of classic Disney animation with “a two-and-a-half-D” look. “What we loved about the world that ND set up with the medieval future is that it has all the advances of technology and yet a mindset in a feudal past. We tried to really lean into that graphic look by using the computer in a way to make some things feel a little richer, a little more real and have depth.”
He says it was a purposeful choice by Blue Sky, and subsequently with DNEG, to topple the CGI norms that have become so standardized by the big animation studios. “It’s challenging what we all know,” he says of the final look. “And I think the more we get to play with those different styles and the more we get to push the boundaries, the more amazing it’ll become.”
Honoring Queer Stories
With the animation itself in good hands, Baird, Bruno and Quane says they turned their attention to story, fixing and smoothing out the overall narrative and going back in to re-emphasize the queer story points that were present in the graphic novel but softened under their Disney tenure.
With regards to that, Bruno says that since Disney inherited Nimona via their acquisition, it only understood after the dust settled what was getting made at Blue Sky. “We started putting together reels for them, and it was very clear that they were not aware that there was a gay relationship in the movie,” he says. “They were very open and honest with us about being a little worried about that because they had tried some things. They had mentioned Beauty and the Beast with [LeFou] and getting a lot of hate mail so there were nerves there.”
Amping up the gender fluidity parallels via Nimona’s shapeshifting and the relationship between soldiers Ballister Boldheart (Riz Ahmed) and Ambrosius Goldenloin (Eugene Lee Yang) became a priority, according to Bruno, to make sure the themes of Nimona’s “otherness” were authentic and unique. They wanted Nimona to resonate with everyone, but especially LGBTQ viewers.
He says that journey started back in the Blue Sky era. The early story development was floundering, so producer Karen Ryan leaned into their studio’s sizable contingent of LGBTQ artists to consult. Invited to creative lunch conversations, they shared their own stories, which in turn informed moments in the script.
“As those stories started to grow, we started to feel very passionate about helping them tell those stories,” Bruno emphasizes. “That’s what Nimona is. It’s the contract the graphic novel had with its readers. So why don’t you explore that?”
“And yes, you want to appeal to the broadest range of people, right?” Quane says. “But the thing we found so amazing and eye-opening is that the more we listened to the stories and started to be so much more specific with what we were saying with it, the more universal it became. It started to make you realize that—and this is where we get really artsy fartsy—we’re all just humans. The fear that was keeping people from being specific…was the thing that wasn’t making it universal. And once we really leaned into it, certain communities found a voice which they deserved. It’s why we cast people like Chloe Moretz and Riz, who speak very much to diversity and inclusion in the media. And it’s because when people get to see themselves and relate to themselves, you realize that we’re way more connected.”
Quane continues, “And the other side of that is working with a creator like ND. It was super important when we came on to make sure that ND felt connected and was brought into the conversation. It is a very personal story that sprang from their heart, and you have an obligation to that as well. It’s very much part of that material.”
With Annapurna and Netflix’s joint blessing, the Ballister and Ambrosius story was expanded, and more pointed conversations between Ballister and Nimona were inserted, so that nothing was too thinly veiled when it came to Nimona’s queer story points.
Baird says he was pleased with how they progressed the story and its themes with the extra time afforded by the resurrection. “When Blue Sky came out of the gate with Ice Age, it came out of the gate so strong,” he remembers. “Not just because the movie did so well at the box office, but I think it did so well at the box office for very strong reasons. It was entertaining, but it was emotional with incredibly memorable characters. It kicked you in the heart. I felt like Nimona, in some ways, was a return to that kind of storytelling. But also just felt very, very of this moment.”
In particular, he references a scene in the third act where Nimona’s utter despair is conveyed by a shift into the black shape of a Kaiju ready to take their own life. “When Ballister tells Nimona, ‘I see you, Nimona. You’re not alone,’ it’s just that,” he says of the power of those words. “There’s so many people who need to feel seen for who they are right now, yet who feel very much alone in the world. I hope that Nimona reaches them. And I hope that this story just helps people make sense of the world a little bit when the world feels like it’s letting them down.”
Quane concurs, adding that Nimona’s release on Netflix—which has an unparalleled global reach—is also a serendipitous outcome when it comes to a broader audience even accidentally watching the film. “The hope that we have is that it affords audiences the ability to watch it all together and bridge a conversation that maybe didn’t have language before. That would be truly amazing, where you can take some of the fear out of it,” he says of the LBGTQ components of the story. “You can just watch this and have some understanding of themes or elements or vocabulary that maybe didn’t exist for some people before. And then maybe you can watch them say, ‘This isn’t as scary as I thought. Or, I understand this maybe in a slightly different way than I had anticipated.’”
The Blue Sky Legacy
The release of Nimona on June 30 marked the very last Blue Sky Studios creation. Baird says he’s content that the finished film is not only something they’re very proud of, but is also indicative of the ambitions Blue Sky intended to explore.
“Every studio gets asked this question: ‘What’s the identity of a studio?’” Baird says. “To me, Nimona and everything else that we were in the process of developing was a little left of center from what everybody else was doing, and felt like it had some risk-taking to it that other studios maybe wouldn’t take on. That was what was incredibly exciting about Nimona and everything that was going to follow at Blue Sky.” But that ethos travels with them to Annapurna Animation. “Nimona is emblematic of everything that we’re going to try to do moving forward, that risk-taking, the relevance, that sense of humor. To be entertaining as hell and still impactful and lasting.”
And Bruno says that extends beyond Annapurna, which is something he’s only come to understand with the completion of Nimona. “In an interesting way, I don’t see it as the last page [of Blue Sky],” he shares. “I did for a while because they definitely closed the door on Blue Sky. But we made an amazing movie together. We learned to be better people together. It’s like the end of Charlotte’s Web, right? All those little spiders went off into the wind and they found different farms…and different studios. I really hope that the [artists] continue to push because they know how to tell these stories in a way that makes the people who are in the leadership of those studios realize that they have an important responsibility to help paint the world the way it is, and not make any kid watching any movie or any show feel like they don’t belong in their own kingdom. I really feel like those [artists] are going to be out there pushing and I think they are going to need our support.”
Quane agrees, adding that the response to Nimona has already been eye-opening and awe-inspiring. “It gave me a different sense of the power of what we get to do making movies, which is so exciting,” he shares. “You remind yourself of that sometimes, especially when you get in the churn of what we got caught in making it. You have to remind yourself this is rarefied air and this is an amazing thing we get to do, and share with the world. It’s a privilege.”
Baird hopes Blue Sky Studios’ ultimate legacy is a landscape of continued creativity that pushes where the medium can go. “There was never any doubt that all those Blue Skyers would find new homes because they’re so talented,” he says with a bittersweet tinge. “It’s the reason that there was no other choice but to have all of their names on the credits at the end. And every time those credits roll, I’m just reduced to tears. It’s such a stew of emotions, where you are so happy that the movie got to a place where you can be rolling credits on screen. But so much sadness that you’re not screening it at the Blue Sky Theater and a Blue Sky wrap party. There’s something so sad and hopeful in the story that’s behind the story. The tragedy of Blue Sky being shattered, but something hopefully so beautiful that came out of a tragic situation. I hope it’s made all those Blue Skyers proud.”
Tara Bennett is a Los Angeles-based writer covering film, television and pop culture for publications such as SFX Magazine, Total Film, SYFY Wire and more. She’s also written books on Sons of Anarchy, Outlander, Fringe, The Story of Marvel Studios and The Art of Avatar: The Way of Water. You can follow her on Twitter @TaraDBennett or Instagram @TaraDBen