Director Will Gluck Interview: Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway

The original Peter Rabbit stories by author Beatrix Potter have entertained audiences since the 1902 publication of The Tale of Peter Rabbit. The 2018 feature film adaptation proved a surprise box office success, grossing over $350 million worldwide. Now, co-writer/director Will Gluck is back with a sequel, Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway. The sequel earned even more critical praise than the first adaptation and has done decent business for itself, especially considering how the ongoing Coronavirus woes have battered family films particularly hard at the box office.

Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway is the rare "talking animal" adventure that manages to effortlessly balance its CGI critters and their stories with the live-action actors and their parallel plots. To achieve this lofty goal, Gluck made an effort to treat the cartoon characters as real people, while letting live-action stars Domnhall Gleeson, Rose Byrne, and David Oyelowo play on a heightened plane of existence. Gleeson, in particular, deserves all the praise in the world for his performance as Mr. McGregor; he really throws his all into the role, and he's a pure delight to watch.

While promoting the home video release of Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway, Gluck spoke to Screen Rant about his work on the film. He talks about his approach to the characters, including his desire to treat the CGI animals as teenage characters, not animated caricatures. He discusses the film's meta themes and insider humor and how he appreciates a quick, high-tension turnaround when working on a sequel. Finally, he shares his thoughts on the prospect of a Peter Rabbit 3 and reveals how far along he is on the script for the yet-to-be-greenlit sequel.

Screen Rant: I just watched the movie today, Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway. I had a great time with this movie.

Will Gluck: Did you watch it in theaters, or did you watch it at home?

I watched it at home, they sent me a publicity link. But I saw the first movie in a crowded theater with lots of kids, and it really benefited from that kind of experience. For this one, though, I didn't even need to have kids around; I liked it just fine all by myself! It's still a family movie, but I felt like it was a lot more grown-up this time around.

Will Gluck: For these movies, we try to make them so they're not "for kids." We tried to make it a family movie that kids will enjoy. And we're pretty hard on ourselves. We really want to make it for everybody, and kids are much smarter than we think. Not only that, but if kids don't understand something, they're okay with not understanding it. They go through life not understanding anything; they're kids! So we don't have to pander to them.

One of my favorite movies is Grease, and when I was a little kid, and every single naughty joke went completely over my head, but that didn't stop me from watching it every single day!

Will Gluck: Yeah, and when you were a kid, you didn't care! You were fine with not knowing.

Exactly. Okay, so walk me through it. You do the first one, and that "written and directed by" credit is so important for me, it gives it an extra punch in my book. You do the first one, it makes $300 million, so they're like, "Okay, round two, let's go?" Was that always in the cards for you, did you always want to ride the Peter Rabbit train into franchise city?

Will Gluck: No. Nobody thought... The only one who thought the first movie would become a franchise less than me... was the studio. No. When the first one did so well they said, "Hey, do you want to do the second one? We want to get it out pretty quickly". And I saw it as an opportunity to try something new. I'd never done a sequel before. All my career, I've tried different genres. And I consider "sequel" to be a genre. And I got to bring my family down to Australia, which I love! I got to go back with my friends, with whom I made the first one, and we had a great time with it. It was a surprise. It happened so quickly. It wasn't like it took five years to make it. From the time they said, "Hey, do you want to make a second one?" We were shooting within four-and-a-half months, and we were done within 16 months. That's amazingly fast for one of these movies.

Peter Rabbit and his siblings standing together looking on at something

It's got such a clever story, too. I feel like it's very true to the spirit of these characters, and the old Beatrix Potter stories. He really gets to go through the wringer, messes up, but he has to fix it and make it right.

Will Gluck: It's not a super original hero's journey, but I guess no hero's journeys are, right?

Well, you definitely got some twists in there, some flourishes on it. And so much of the meta stuff. I mean, the very end of the movie is basically what I asked you before, when he says, "Hey, we never thought we'd make it this far."

Will Gluck: Yeah, of course. Oh, believe me, that's the one thing I enjoy the most: Rose Byrne's story with the publisher, I mean, that was super fun to write and do, obviously.

Did you turn that in to the Sony people and were they, like, "Are you trying to tell us something, Will?"

Will Gluck: I think they know where I stand. (Laughs) They kept saying, "Just do the animals, the talking animals!" And every time we had a screening, they'd go, "Get rid of that storyline, keep the animals!" But you need both, and they had a good attitude. They're self-aware, as well.

I think Domnhall Gleeson is such a talented guy. He goes for it. Do you have to direct him, do you have to coax it out of him, or is he game to play from the jump?

Will Gluck: He is the most committed actor. I love him. We treated this movie like a movie, you know? Even though there's so much craziness with the CGI, but he committed to every single thing. So did David Oyelowo. But when Domnhall does physical comedy, he makes it look so easy. That scene where he's falling down the hill, that's him! He did it. After five or six takes, he said, "I don't think I have many more in me, Will." And then we decided, "Hey, what if there's a shot where he's close-up to the camera while he's rolling?" And that's just Domnhall with a camera duct taped to his arm, and he just throws himself down the hill. He's so committed, he's so funny. Usually, a movie takes 300 crew members and all that. But this scene was just Domnhall, a camera, and a roll of duct tape. And it was fantastic. I loved it.

We see these big CGI blockbusters with these outrageous budgets, but I looked up the spending on this one, and they said it's less than $50 million...

Will Gluck: First of all... let this be a lesson about Wikipedia. That's not true at all. And second of all, we had incredible Australian tax incentives from the government. This was a wildly expensive movie that we made for very cheap because of the participation of the Australian government. But it's definitely cheaper than a Marvel movie, that's for sure!

Got it. So, when you're doing the CGI stuff, how much of it do you pre-viz, how much of it is written in the script, and how much of it do you get to play around on set and figure out on the day?

Will Gluck: There's very little pre-viz. We tried it the first time, but just wound up throwing it all out. For this one, no pre-viz. We knew we wouldn't do it. So the majority of it is just filming it and figuring out as we go in post, which is so fun. You can keep changing things. Animal Logic, the animation house, was so great. They're incredibly talented and able to move and change things. We were constantly figuring things out in post.

Do you still do the old thing of tennis balls and sticks with cardboard cutouts of character faces on them? Or is that so 2003?

Will Gluck: That is a little 2003. No tennis balls were harmed in the making of this movie. But we did little guys we called "stuffies." Basically, a stuffed animal that looks like the shape of a rabbit that's all blue and the same weight as a rabbit, so they could hold it. We were very concerned with making it look good when they were holding things. So it was much better to make it feel like they were holding them. If there was a scene with just an animated animal, we'd use the stuffie, or oftentimes just a laser pointer.

Like playing with cats!

Will Gluck: Yeah, exactly! (Laughs) It's true, because when the rabbits run, the VFX supervisor would know how fast they run, and the actors would be able to follow them with their eyes. It's really hard to act, though. It's quite difficult.

I bet! When you're writing, and you do have a partner on this one. Were you solo on the first one?

Will Gluck: No, I had a partner for both. A guy named Rob Lieber worked on the first one, and a guy named Patrick Burleigh worked on the second one.

For this one, I want to articulate how much I liked it! I normally cross my arms and roll my eyes whenever I detect an imbalance between the humans and the animals in this kind of movie, but I think this is one of the very few examples that really nailed it and gave both sides interesting storylines and fun things to do. My arms were not crossed!

Will Gluck: I wrote this movie as if the characters were just teenagers. So if you take the CGI element out of it, the whole movie works if you see them as teenagers and these are their step-parents. I always like writing teenagers. Teenagers are smarter than we think. I never wrote for a talking animal. I never wrote for a "rabbit." I wrote for Peter and Benjamin and all of them. I would get angry during production when they were like, "The brown rabbit needs to move..." And I'd be like, "Hey, he's got a name! His name is Benjamin!" I really wanted to make them characters. Once you do that, and you get great actors to put their voices in it... That's another thing, we didn't hire voice actors, we hired actors to act like it's a real movie, not a cartoon.

Right, actors who could play them in live-action, and not just give them a voice.

Will Gluck:Once you do that, that kind of "talking animal" cutesy stuff just falls away. In all of my work, I'll say, "Nobody would ever say that. Nobody sounds like that." Here, too. Whenever Peter or the girls talk, it's like a 16-year-old boy and a 16-year-old girl talking to each other.

I hope the rest of the genre takes their notes from you because I really think you nailed it on this one. Okay, so the release date switched a million times. I know there was a thing with Cadbury Eggs, some marketing tie-in that came out without the movie in tow...Coronavirus madness. But the movie's doing pretty well from what I can tell at the box office. So, are you geared up? Are you writing Peter Rabbit 3: He's Still Running Away?

Will Gluck: We have a big idea for Peter Rabbit 3. If they let us make it. It's really hard to make a sequel. It's even harder to make a third one. This one, it's a really good idea. I've written half of it. We're just waiting to see what happens at the box office. But it's a pretty crazy idea.

Well, I hope you get the green light so we can talk about it in two years. Or maybe they'll give you a little more time. Three years.