“You see a lot of personal films, but then you rarely see more personalized animated films.” This is what led acclaimed director and writer Tim Burton (Big Fish, Sweeney Todd) to help produce the film 9, an animated film set in a post-apocalyptic world, which opens today. Burton, who spoke about producing the project this summer, helped bring new filmmaker Shane Acker the needed material to turn his short film into a full-length feature.
While both the short film and feature-length film are set in the same universe—a post-apocalyptic world where robots rule and a few puppet-like creatures live on the edge—9, co-written by Burton collaborator Pamela Pettler with Acker, expands the story into a full-length action film in which the puppets start to discover the secret to their existence and fight back against the robots.
Burton was intrigued after watching the short film and found it a curious mix between a familiar plot and a new type of storytelling. “We’ve all seen post-apocalyptic imagery a million times. But, again, I was surprised at the poetry to this, and the quietness and the things between the lines,” he said. So Burton, along with Wanted director Timur Bekmambetov, offered advice and helped get Acker a budget and collaborators to put the film together. “When you are working on an animated [film] you get very tunnel-visioned. Shane has had this in his mind for so long that its sometimes good to have people who can step back and look at the big picture.”
Although Burton has been around for almost two decades as a filmmaker, he found it thrilling to work as a producer of new talent, and to watch Acker evolve. “It doesn’t matter if the movie is a success or not a success—it’s still a wonderful moment that will never be the same for you. I know I’m enjoying seeing that happen where nobody really knew about it, and it gets finished quietly on its own, focusing on the movie.”
And 9 is the type of film that can appeal to a broad audience. Though its opening images and premise might feel very bleak, the film has a strong heart at its center about characters coming together, even if it might feel formulaic at times. What keeps 9 going through its somewhat repetitive action sequences is Acker’s unique visual style and the quiet spaces in which he lets his characters breathe. It’s a small personal story set against a vastly epic world.
As Burton continues his work on his adaptation of Alice in Wonderland and prepares for his upcoming retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, he has enjoyed working collaboratively with fresh talent on 9. Burton’s touches for creating fully fleshed-out worlds in films such as Batman and The Nightmare Before Christmas is also evident in 9. And even if it’s fantasy, he likes to think of the characters as real: “Good fantasy speaks to reality, it speaks to something real in somebody’s life. That’s why those old stories have been told around campfire.”
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