Wish is the culmination of 100 years of Disney animation magic, with young heroine Asha making a wish upon a star. However, things don’t go as expected when a star falls out of the sky to answer her impassioned call. Star, the name of the star, helps Asha in her quest to defeat the darkness in her home, the Kingdom of Rosas. As Asha fights for a better future for herself and her people, she’ll have to face powerful foes, including King Magnifico.
With Disney Animation Studios celebrating its hundredth anniversary this year, Wish is the perfect movie to showcase the iconic studio. Wish stars a powerhouse cast led by Ariana DeBose, Chris Pine, Angelique Cabral, and Alan Tudyk. Wish is directed by Chris Buck and Fawn Veerasunthorn, with a script written by Jennifer Lee and Allison Moore.
Screen Rant spoke with directors Chris Buck and Fawn Veerasunthorn about their new Disney animated movie, Wish. They shared why they wanted to bring in a villain from the jump while still making them stand out from other classic Disney villains, and why Pine is perfect for the role. They also reflected on the evolution of Disney Animation heroines and working with Julia Michaels on the music.
Directors Chris Buck & Fawn Veerasunthorn Talk Wish
Screen Rant: Wish looks incredible! The animation looks nostalgic yet contemporary, and you can really feel the magic coming off of the screen. First question I have for you guys is how does Asha reflect the evolution of the Disney heroine from Snow White to Maribel?
Fawn Veerasunthorn: Ooh, great question.
Chris Buck: That’s a good question. Well the evolution, one thing that we do is, when we start, Asha’s 17, we kind of go back to our own lives. I have kids, who now they’re in their twenties and thirties, but I remember the 17-year-olds, and you go back to that. What were they like then? It was a character that, she sees that there’s a wrong in the world, right? And she believes it must be righted. And what I love about Asha is she doesn’t stop.
She keeps going until, and that is her wish, until she rights this wrong in the world. And I think so many young people, I can look at my kids and be inspired by them and that tenaciousness, which really gets things done, and that’s what I love. And so we go to that, to what’s around us, what we’re seeing. And not always, even though, yes, this is a legacy film, but we also look to see what’s happening today.
Fawn Veerasunthorn: And we remember that when you’re 17, you just have this admirable fearlessness about you that you haven’t faced many failures yet. So you’re not afraid to go for what you want. And I think to me, especially for Asha, someone who’s not afraid to be herself, and her friends just accept her as who she is. That’s what I really love about her character. And I think that brings the modern sensibility into the storytelling.
Chris Buck: And we’ve got Ariana DeBose, who is awesome and like you said, she’s not afraid to be herself. What you see on the screen, what you see in interviews, that’s Ariana. She is a hundred percent genuine.
Well, that’s actually what I wanted to ask about next, is Ariana. Because she’s an incredible actress to bring so much energy to any role that she’s in. Can you guys talk to me about the process of crafting the character with her?
Fawn Veerasunthorn: We’ll go to recording sessions, right? We’ll have the script, but we were like, this is a collaborative process and we can try different things. And over the course of time, she started building this character in her mind. I can feel it. She was like, Asha’s here today, Asha started coming back to me, and Asha would do this or that. And we just kept encouraging, we love how you talk, how you just be yourself.
Just bring that, don’t be afraid to bring that part of yourself into this role. And she started talking to us about, I have some ideas about how Asha would walk, how she would run, how she used her hands. And we said, great, let’s come meet our animators. And she did. She came to hang out with the animation department, talk to them. They were so inspired by her.
I’m a sucker for a good Disney villain, and King Magnifico looks incredible, and he seems incredible. How does he stand out from past villains while still celebrating what people love about the Disney villain? And why was Chris Pine, the right actor for the role? Because he’s not really known for playing villains at all really.
Chris Buck: So Magnifico was born out of our desire to have a villain in our movies that you knew was a villain from early on and that you could love to hate them the entire movie. Which is some of our favorite Disney villains.
Fawn Veerasunthorn: We missed it ourselves. Really.
Chris Buck: We’ve done movies in the past where, yeah, it was a little bit hidden, but this one was like, let’s just do it. And we also like a lot of our fans, we went, “This what is what they’ve been asking for. So we were asking for it also.” So it started there.
And then, even the name Magnifico came from, well he’s basically a narcissist. So of course he would call himself Magnifico. But it was also sort of a nod to Maleficent, right? So Maleficent, it’s in the name, sort of what her character is, and then this guy’s, well, he would come up with a name like that. So we had fun with that. And then it became time for casting. It wasn’t hard when we finally, we didn’t scan too hard. We were like, Chris Pine would be amazing. We just didn’t know if we would be able to get him. And so he said yes. We talked to him for a little bit, totally up for it.
Fawn Veerasunthorn: And Chris Pine brought so much charm and comedy to this character because we want to make a bad guy. We want to make people feel conflicted about do I hate him or do I love him? And that’s the line that we are trying to walk beautifully the whole time. So Chris brought that sensibility of, I admire this person. He’s a king, but wow, he’s really bad. But also it’s kind of interesting. So we gave him a juicy backstory. And what we both love is that we see the descent of this king into the villain that he becomes throughout this movie. So you just kind of see the origin story of this.
Chris Buck: Yeah, it’s a little different than some of the villains we’ve done where when those villains show up on screen, they are fully formed villains. And this one you see it.
That is incredible. Now look, I know you guys, oh, sorry, go ahead.
Fawn Veerasunthorn: Oh, just one fun story. Chris Pine did say it himself. He said, I keep getting cast as a prince and good guys. They’re so boring. I love playing villains. So just want to put it out there.
I love that. I love that. Now, I know that you guys went back and did a ton of research on this for the past hundred years of Disney animation. For those hardcore Disney fans who really want to get into the spirit of Wish, what are three Disney films that best set audiences up for Wish?
Chris Buck: Well, probably Snow White would be one that was, we went to that
Fawn Veerasunthorn: For The look.
Chris Buck: … the look, the original artists and all that to see how they did it. The watercolor look. Sleeping Beauty-
Fawn Veerasunthorn: Is another big one.
Chris Buck: Another big one, because that design style, our production design team, Mike Giaimo, I went to school with Mike Giaimo in Cal Arts, and he’s always loved Sleeping Beauty. I’ve always known this about him. So you’ll see that in his work quite a bit. But let’s see, Sleeping Beauty, What would be one more that-
Fawn Veerasunthorn: Another one is Alice in Wonderland, I think. A whole vibrant world.
Chris Buck: Yeah, another great artist, Mary Blair. You have Eyvind Earle from Sleeping Beauty.
Fawn Veerasunthorn: And then Mary Blair from Alice.
Throughout Disney history, music has really fit the times. It’s really been contemporary with the times. What made Julia Michaels the right person for such a milestone film? Because the music in this is incredible.
Chris Buck: Thank you, and there’s a few more that you’re going to love too. With the first demo that she wrote, it was “This Wish,” it’s Asha’s I Want song. She captured, and we didn’t tell her to do this, she’s just a big fan of Disney and all the movies, she captured what we felt was like a classic sound and yet contemporary because that’s who she is. She’s a pop star. She’s of today, she’s young, and so she can bring both of those together and that’s what we wanted to do with the whole movie. In a movie that is celebrating our legacy, but then the future too.
Fawn Veerasunthorn: The way she writes is so honest and vulnerable, and it represents a young person’s frustration and angst, but it sounds classical and beautiful. She walks the line perfectly in terms of bringing the pop tunes into the Disney film.
About Wish
Wish will follow a young girl named Asha who wishes on a star and gets a more direct answer than she bargained for when a trouble-making star comes down from the sky to join her. Asha a 17-year-old driven optimist, and leader in the making.
Check out our other Wish interviews here:
- Writer Jennifer Lee
- Producers Peter Del Vecho & Juan Pablo Reyes Lancaster
Key Release Date
Wish
Release Date:2023-11-22
