Eerder vandaag kon je hier op Eigenwereld.nl al lezen dat Tim Burtons Frankenweenie redelijk slecht opende het afgelopen weekeinde. Wat mij een beetje treurig maakt omdat dit zo ongelofelijk leuke film is. Maar de website Fearnet.com had een interview met screenwriter John August over hoe hij en Tim het verhaal van de short herschreven na een volledige film.

What was the process like, adapting Tim Burton's short film into a feature animation?

Tim called and said he wanted to make Frankenweenie a feature and told me to see the short film. I said, "Of course I've seen your short." Tim knew he wanted to know what the short film did - tell the story of a boy and his dog, and bringing the dog back to life - but he had this idea that the other boys in class would want to make their own monsters, and [Tim] had a list of "monsters" he'd like to see. From that, it was just building out the rest of the world to support that. I pitched back that I wanted to make a weirdly pro-science movie. I wanted a science teacher to come in, I wanted a science fair, I pitched New Holland, this suburban town that, for some reason, has a windmill, which could be used as a set piece at the end.

That was one of the things I noticed: that Sparky didn't feel like a cartoon dog; he felt like a real dog.

Tim wanted to make sure, at the script phase, that we weren't making Sparky do anything that a real dog couldn't do. So Sparky isn't anthropomorphic in the sense that he isn't smarter than other real dogs. He acts in a dog-like way to most of the things that happen.