Why Ron Perlman and Emma Roberts Joined This Indie Stop-Motion Fantasy

The Big Picture

• Saurus City is an animated film that highlights themes of parenthood and adoption, using a blend of techniques and featuring a star-studded cast.
• The film tells the story of a princess and a grizzled knight who embark on a dangerous adventure in a fantasy world filled with dinosaurs and castles.
• The film’s director, Nathan Smith, used 3D-printed stop-motion animation to create a unique and delightful storytelling experience.

One of the family-friendly features at Sundance Film Festival this year was Nathan Smith’s animated film, Saurus City. Highlighting themes of parenthood and adoption, the movie enlists the vocal talents of an ensemble cast including Emma Roberts, Ron Perlman, Tim Miller, and Dennis Quaid, and creates an original fantasy world using a blend of techniques.

In the movie, Saurus City Kingdom is facing a formidable challenge, and the princess (Roberts) knows the only way to save their beloved, fantastical kingdom is to put their trust in the grizzled knight, Slade Klossus (Perlman), to seek out their only hope: a baby. Putting everything on the line, Klossus embarks on a dangerous adventure in this fantasy that mixes knights and castles with epic dinosaurs. Smith, who wrote and directed Saurus City, uses 3D-printed stop-motion animation to tell his original story in a uniquely delightful way.

Though they’ve just wrapped post-production on the film, Smith attended Sundance with executive producer Richard Joel and co-executive producer and Film.io VP of Entertainment, Lauren Magura. The trio joined us in our interview studio, sponsored by Film.io, to talk with Collider’s Steve Weintraub about making Smith’s independent film a reality. They discuss working through Film.io to garner a fan base, the star-studded cast, and pouring their heart and souls into this animated feature. Smith talks about the personal inspiration behind Saurus City‘s message, the beautiful artwork, blending 3D printing, stop-motion, and CGI and tons more.

You can check out the full interview in the video above, or you can read it all in transcript form below.

What Is Film.io?

COLLIDER: I really want to give a huge thank you to Film.io for being our sponsor this year. I love being able to champion indie cinema, and the only reason we get to be here is because of sponsors like you guys. Normally I give this big speech explaining things, but why don’t you actually say what Film.io is about?

LAUREN MAGURA: So Film.io is a decentralized filmmaking ecosystem, and it places the power of Hollywood in the hands of creators and fans. Essentially, we’re handing the power to green light films into the hands of creators and fans to work together and collaborate. So, the audience is a part of the filmmaking process before the film gets made so it could be more successful.

Obviously, if you look at the sign behind, you can see Film.io is the website. Please visit and support. I really sincerely thank you because we really wouldn’t be here without people like you.

MAGURA: We’re glad, and you’re a great partner because you have a very similar ethos as us, that fans are really important in collaboration. We’re excited to be here with you.

So jumping into why I get to talk to you, sir, would you like to explain what is sitting on the table and what you have been working on?

NATHAN SMITH: Sure. These are stop-motion puppets, actually. We are just finishing the post right now on a film called Saurus City, and we did it all in stop-motion. These are some of the actual characters we use that we actually animated with. You can see various hands of the characters here. We have a couple of different mouth expressions. The faces are 3D printed and then the bodies themselves we make out of silicone and foam and metal, basically whatever the puppet calls for is what we need to do in order to get the animation we need.

I have been to many places that have done stop-motion, and generally speaking, they are smaller than this when it comes to stop-motion. So I’m curious, how did you decide on this size for your puppets?

SMITH: The reason we went this way was because there’s only so small you can 3D-print certain things. So, what we do, actually, is we have a built-in infrastructure inside with the eyeballs and the eyelids. All that is one mechanism for the animator, because we were going for ease of use, because when you’re an independent filmmaker, you have to go as fast as possible, right? You’re trying to cruise through because you only have so much money that you can use. There’s only so small you can 3D-print these little mechanisms, so that’s why we had to go with this size, because this is about as small as we could get, unfortunately. It was basically like I’m animating a toddler every day when I was on the set.

‘Saurus City’ Celebrates Adoption and Family

No one has seen it yet, there’s no footage, so how have you been describing the film to friends and family?

SMITH: Essentially, the story is actually an adoption story. I adopted both of my children and I wanted to create a story that kind of celebrates birth parents who make the choice to place their children for adoption. Now, making that jump to this, some people think it’s a little strange, but what we wanted to do was take this kind of heavy, heartwarming theme and put it into a fun adventure. Pixar is synonymous with doing that. They take these heavy themes, heavy stories, and they plug them into these really fun adventures, so that’s what we did too.

The story itself is actually the universe is set in this world with dinosaurs, and these people are actually about the size of a mouse. They build their villages and cities and structures on the backs of dinosaurs, and they do that for protection. So when you see the film, these guys are actually going to be really small, but you can only animate something so small so we have to build them big, and then using computer technology, green screening and things like that, we’re able to shrink them down to the size that they should be.

Check Out the Beautiful Artwork of ‘Saurus City’

I don’t know how you got dinosaurs in an indie movie. Richard, would you like to explain this?

RICHARD JOEL: I think it’s a bit of a fantasy world where we kind of smashed 11th century England, and that sort of time period, with the Jurassic world of dinosaurs, and it’s actually magical. It’s what drew Laura and I in when we read it.

MAGURA: The artwork was beautiful.

JOEL: The artwork and just the idea of having people live on the back of dinosaurs is such a fantastic fantasy that they could be merged together, and synonymous to, like, “Oh, they actually live together, and they bond.” So, it’s a beautiful world, it’s beautiful animation, it’s a beautiful story…

MAGURA: There’s humor.

JOEL: Yeah, there’s humor and it’s heartfelt and it’s warm, and it’s about family and belonging and redemption and sacrifice, and adoption. It’s just a beautiful heartwarming story. I like to think of it as like Indiana Jones in that it’s a nonstop adventure. Once it starts, it’s nonstop.

How ‘Saurus City’ Charmed Emma Roberts, Ron Perlman, & More

I saw your cast list, and you put together some really good names. Talk a little bit about your voice guest. Was it tough to get any of them or did it all just work out easy?

SMITH: Surprisingly, it actually was easy. So our lead cast is Dennis Quaid, Ron Perlman, Emma Roberts — in fact, this is Ron Perlman’s character right here — and Aimee Garcia, Tim Meadows, Julie Ormond.

It’s like nobody I’ve heard of.

SMITH: [Laughs] Right. But I think what it was is like everyone else that has been a part of the project, you see the artwork, you see the visuals and you see what’s going into it, and then the heart behind the story, and people just resonate with it. It’s a story that everyone can relate to. It’s a story that children will love, adults will love. We tried to make it as universal as possible, so it doesn’t matter what country you live in, it doesn’t matter where you are, everyone’s gonna be able to relate to the story.

Since we are talking about Film.io, how did Film.io play a role in getting this made? What’s the relationship?

MAGURA: Actually, the film came on after we had already wrapped on post and stuff like that. It was more to start building an audience. That’s something that Film.io does really, really well is it allows creators to put their work out there and start creating fans before it hits theaters or before it hits streaming, so you actually have a fan base for a successful movie. So, Saurus City was actually put on the platform after hundreds of other films, and it’s number two on the platform right now with the fan support that it’s garnered, and so a lot of fans are really excited to see it already. It’s only been on for a few months and we have, like, hundreds of thousands of fan tokens staked, which they act as a vote to green light the film, and it has one of the highest Go Scores.

The Go Score in Film.io basically acts as a project success fingerprint. It takes fan engagement and shares how people are interacting with it. It gives it this score, and the higher your Go Score the higher fan support and engagement that you have to get it green lit, and Nate’s project is the second highest on the platform. So it’s really exciting to see this fan support, and I can see why. I mean, it’s a great cast, great characters, if anybody sees the artwork, it’s just so beautiful, and it’s a great film.

For people that are now interested in this, you’re obviously indie, but what’s your plan for when you might show footage or you’re gonna show the movie? Is it one of these things where you’re thinking about a festival or are you thinking about showing it to buyers? What’s that game plan for you?

SMITH: Really, right now it’s wrapping up post and then showing it to buyers. That’s the route we’re going. We also really like being partnered up with Film.io. It’s so great to partner up with them because they have the ability to create and garner an audience before the movie is even finished. But the approach definitely is getting a buyer. We wanted to do it completely independently because we wanted to tell the story the way we wanted to tell it.

MAGURA: Creative freedom.

SMITH: Exactly, and especially the whole adoption angle, because I wanted it to be relatable to the experience that we went through with our children. I didn’t want to have a bunch of cooks in the kitchen or anything like that.

Why Being Indie Was Important to ‘Saurus City’s Message

A lot of people don’t really realize that, and I’ve had this conversation with so many people, but if you make a movie for $5 million you’re gonna have a lot more creative freedom than if you have $100 million. If you make a movie for $50,000 you’re gonna have a ton of creative freedom. But you’re so right, you are able to tell your story because you guys did it out of the box. Is there anything in the film that you’re especially proud of that you got to put in it because you know that if it was done in the studio system, the notes would say, “No effing way?”

SMITH: There’s a sequence right in the middle of the film where the main character here, Ron Perlman’s character, his name is Slade, and Slade, he’s basically the eyes of the audience. He doesn’t understand why a birth parent would make this choice. He can’t understand it. And there’s a sequence where he asks one of the main characters, “Why are you doing this? Why are you giving your child away?” It gets pretty deep into why the decision is made, and I don’t know that that would have gone through because it gets pretty deep into the psyche of a birth parent.

I’m gonna say to you, you’re dealing with themes that most movies don’t deal with, let alone stop-motion, and so I commend you because it really is important that films keep on pushing boundaries and doing things that other people aren’t doing. So, I say congrats on being able to pull this off.

SMITH: Yeah, it has definitely been a labor of love. I mean, we’ve worked on it for years and years just trying to get it to the point where it is. A lot of people have put everything they can into making it happen, and I think it’s because of the themes around the film. I think that’s why it’s gonna be successful.

For all three of you, what are you actually most excited for audiences to see when they finally get to see this movie?

JOEL: For me personally, I tested a little bit of it on a friend and her two kids, and they were nine and 13. They saw about 20 to 30 minutes, and just of that part that they saw, they said it was so heartfelt, it had such warmth and depth that it actually had a soul to them. They said a lot of animation’s just created to sort of just entertain with the big eyes, and nothing against it, but they actually felt like they were connected to these characters and they were drawn in by their story. That moved me to know that we can take a film like this, and whether be children or adults, you don’t have to have kids to see this film, I think everybody’s gonna go on this journey with us and into this film and feel that they were changed by it and that they will look at people, and adoption and kids… I just met somebody last night that was adopted and we were talking about the film, and she’s like, “It’s amazing. I know my birth parents now.” So I think the idea of adoption has changed, and adopting kids has changed, and I think this film will kind of open up everybody’s eyes.

MAGURA: I mentioned it earlier, but I’m really excited for everybody to see the artwork. It’s just so cool. There are different villages that are built with different themes on the backs of dinosaurs, and it’s really fun. It’s really cool. They’re gonna love the artwork.

SMITH: That was going to be the thing I said. With everyone, at the end of the day it comes down to dinosaurs with the villages. That’s the thing that sells it the most. I think that people are just gonna be blown away by some of the things we’ve created; some of it you can’t do in stop-motion, you shouldn’t do, but we did it. We pulled it off.

MAGURA: The sets are amazing.

JOEL: It’s blending sort of a new technology, right?

SMITH: It really is.

JOEL: It’s like stop-motion, CGI, 3D printing. It’s something that really hasn’t been done before, so the look and feel, people are like, “Wait, is it CG? Is it stop-motion?” And people even who have seen animation get a little like, “Oh, this is really cool. What is that?”

Oh, I’m definitely looking forward to seeing this. I’m curious how you pulled this off, and also I like supporting indie cinema. This is not some huge budget, Universal or Netflix production. People who are working on this are obviously putting their heart and soul into it.

SMITH: Yep, it’s definitely a passion project.

JOEL: And for us it’s not just stopping with this one film. We want to create the world of it, and continue on their story after this journey as to what happens next with Reaya and Slade and Sasha. Where do their adventures take us?

Special thanks to our 2024 partners at Sundance including presenting partner Film.io and supporting partners Pressed Juicery and DragonFly Coffee Roasters.