Roy Ambriz and Arturo Ambriz’s Cinema Fantasma is behind the hit HBO Max series Frankelda’s Book Of Spooks.
This week the Mexico City-based animation producers are in Annecy with the feature Frankelda And The Prince Of Spooks which they are presenting as a work in progress at the festival with Warner Bros Discovery Latin America.
Tell us a little about Frankelda And The Prince Of Spooks and what stage it is at.
Arturo Ambriz: “We have an hour and ten minutes of the film finished. Out of it, 50 minutes are already post-produced. The final length will be 90 or 100 minutes. We are still discussing it.
How does it fit into the world of the Frankelda’s Book Of Spooks series?
Roy Ambriz: After the big success of this series, we at Cinema Fantasma and Warner, wanted to give continuity to Frankelda. Guillermo del Toro, in fact, wrote a letter to Warner Bros Discovery executives congratulating them and telling them to continue supporting Frankelda, because it was a milestone in the history of animation in Mexico. This letter helped to motivate them to do so.
Arturo Ambriz: In the last series we explore the background story of Frankelda. Where does she comes from? Why does she write? And it turned out that this was what interested the public most. Warner specifically asked us to expand this story. The film then serves as a prequel and sequel to the series. And more than horror stories, it’s the story of how Frankelda became the official writer of the world where monsters live, a place so-called Topus Terrenus. The movie has much higher production values. . There are about 40 sets and over 150 characters.
Mexico is world class when it comes to stop-motion animation, What is the reason behind this technique’s success?
Roy Ambriz: I think it’s tied to the lack of resources. Stop-motion allows you to achieve a good finish without the Pixar technology. In Mexico there has always been a great visual culture. If you go to the Museum of Anthropology and see the sculptures there, all the art of our ancestors, you will see it was always very physical, very volumetric and with a highly developed aesthetic.
What else are you working on?
Roy Ambriz: Our studio is manufacturing the puppets and sets for the Ballad Of The Phoenix, while we as writers are developing another new film for children, a stop-motion about insects. The title is The Bees’ Revolution, which is a co-production with Manolo Caro’s Woo Films, the producers of The House Of The Flowers.
Arturo Ambriz: We have another film for adults, Vermins Of The New World which has already finished development. It is in stop-motion and set during the colonial conquest of Mexico. In addition, we have a series in production for Warner.
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