This Friday, get ready for a whole new kind of superhero story as DIsney+ launches its latest original film, Flora & Ulysses. Based on the children's novel of the same name, the movie follows a young girl named Flora Buckman (Matilda Lawler) who adopts a superpowered pet squirrel named Ulysses.
The film is helmed by Lena Khan, whose last feature was the critically acclaimed comedy The Tiger Hunter, and ahead of this Friday's launch, we were able to sit down with the Indian-Canadian filmmaker and pick her brain about working on her first big studio film, and find out how that compared to her experience working on independent projects.
"It was really weird because there were a lot of similarities, my movie (The Tiger Hunter) was also kind of - we were trying to make something that looked like a bigger budget than it was and it’s weird because even on this level, we were trying to do that on this too. There’s a lot of CGI and there’s stunts and there’s children and all sorts of things, fitting it into a mid-level budget too, so there were those same challenges, which was really weird, but the huge difference is that you’re working with a studio, so you’re not the only boss, which was kind of a new dynamic.
It was something I had to learn to get used to, but it ended up pushing us to what was good because you had to figure out how to keep things that were in your comic sensibilities and in your vision, but still get within what the studio were looking for too, which just made you challenge yourself and kind of push things further until you couldn’t argue with it like ‘this is definitely a better pitch’ and so there was a lot of debate back and forth, fights/debates, where I’m like ‘No, it has to be like--’ and by the end, you have to push yourself to find something that they’ll say yes to and that ended up being better anyway."
As Lena mentions above, one of the most unique challenges this film presented was the inclusion of an entirely CGI character, which was something she had never attempted before in her career. While Ulysses is her own creation, it does sound like she drew some inspiration from what Marvel Studios has done with Rocket Raccoon and what Paramount did with Sonic the Hedgehog.
"We did a little mix of everything, for the most part, we started with nothing and we did the traditional sort of, we had a build for Ulysses. Matilda is a really good actress, so we didn’t have to do as much, sometimes we started off with a lot of different ways for her to interact with Ulysses, but that would require a lot more work on the post-end to take those things out, so ultimately all I had to do was puppet Ulysses, do it a few times and she would understand what’s happening, even for a two-minute scene and she’d be able to walk along with that, so that we could build the model and do most of the creation in post."
Like The Tiger Hunter, a much more personal project for her, Flora & Ulysses is also filled to the brim with genuine heart. While Khan says she doesn't necessarily try to manufacture emotion in her films, her own sincerity may just end up being reflected, which is never a bad thing.
"It kind of depends on whether it’s right for the movie, like right now I’m working on a dark comedy about a magician with chronic depression that is darker than this, but I guess has that sort of sincerity in it somehow in its own weird, playful way and it might be something that, maybe it’s in me and it might just come out that way."
Check out our full video interview with director Lena Khan below and don't forget to like and subscribe!
Flora & Ulysses is based on the Newbery Award-winning book about 10-year-old Flora, an avid comic book fan and a self-avowed cynic, whose parents have recently separated. After rescuing a squirrel she names Ulysses, Flora is amazed to discover he possesses unique superhero powers, which take them on an adventure of humorous complications that ultimately change Flora's life--and her outlook--forever.
Flora & Ulysses premieres exclusively on Disney+ on February 19