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continuing to make them look like
animals. Most movies either make them
look completely like animals, like the new
Lion King, or barely at all. We tried for
both. That was the hardest thing.
The two hardest were the deer and
the cat [Tom Kitten, voiced by Damon
Herriman]. We changed the rabbits a little
bit with their eyes, because real rabbits
have eyes on the sides of their heads,
so we moved them to the front of their
heads. But when you look at an animated
character that you know so well in real
life, like a cat, it has to be either perfect
or completely off. Otherwise, it messes
with your head because it’s not quite what
you’re used to.
You’re an American, and this is a very
British movie. The story is British, your
three main live-action characters are
British, James Corden is British. Were
there any cultural differences you had
to navigate?
Sure. We made this with [Peter Rabbit
author and illustrator] Beatrix Potter’s
estate. We got the rights, and we spent
a lot of time with them in London,
every step of the way. We had a lot of
Brits working on this movie who were
constantly saying to me, “That’s not right,
that’s not right, that’s not right.” But by
the end of working on the movie, I, myself,
started to talk that way! There’s actually a
joke in the movie about whether it’s called
a “flashlight” or a “torch.”
There’s an extended sequence
featuring the song “Boulevard of
Broken Dreams” by Green Day.
This movie hardly jibes with the
public image Green Day has
cultivated for almost 30 years.
Was it hard to get their permission
for the rights to that song?
Every time you put a song in a movie,
especially when you’re actually
highlighting the song, it takes time and
finessing. Bands like Green Day—and, in
the last movie, Fort Minor—they have kids.
That’s the golden ticket we have. We call
the songwriter up and say, “For your kid.”
They want to be relevant!
How many takes did the screaming
rooster require? And can that voice
actor still speak?
The rooster is a character I created for
these movies. Beatrix Potter didn’t have
Left: Elizabeth Debicki,
Margot Robbie, Colin
Moody, James Corden,
and Aimee Horneg find
their inner rabbit in Peter
Rabbit 2: The Runaway.
Above: Domhnall Gleeson
and Rose Byrne revisit
the world of Beatrix
Potter (top), as director
Will Gluck confers with
Gleeson and director
of photography Peter
Menzies Jr. on set
(bottom).
him. If you look online at the credits for
the first movie, that voice actor is our
[award-winning] VFX supervisor. The way
it works in these movies, you start at the
beginning with people recording what they
call scratch tracks—you bring in anyone to
do it instead of real actors, just so you get a
sense of it. He was always so good, we knew
he was going to do it [for the actual film].
The thing about that is, since he’s not
an actor, when he does that voice, he
literally gets red, hyperventilates, downs
water, needs to take a break. He just
screams into the microphone. And he’s
Australian, so we had to have a dialect
coach in there to help him with the British.
So it becomes like this four-hour session,
this poor man, Will Reichelt, just getting
red and sweaty and almost passing out.
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