The following is an exclusive interview with the executive producer Jacob Robinson and director Willis Bulliner of the Skull Island animated show produced by Legendary Entertainment Television. Interview conducted on July 3rd, 2023 at Anime Expo in Los Angeles, California. This interview was edited for flow.

 

Chris Mirjahangir
How did you come aboard this project?

Willis Bulliner
Legendary approached Powerhouse about working on the series. And, after that happened, one of Powerhouse’s supervising producers Jason Williams, he came to me and he showed me the show bible that Brian Duffield had wrote for the show. And I just kind of fell in love with everything that they were trying to do with this world and these characters, and it was kind of an immediate yes for me, like wanting to work on this project. And then from there I met with the folks at Legendary. I met with Jacob and Brian, and we all just started kind of kicking around ideas and just, kind of took off from there, really.

Chris
How’s the fan reaction been to the to the show?

Willis
From what I’ve seen, it’s been positive. It’s been a lot of folks. I knew that there were a lot of Skull Island, and Kong, and MonsterVerse fans, but just kind of seeing all of that come about now has been nice and they’ve been really, really, positive about it and really supportive.

Chris
You guys left it on that cliffhanger for season one and Brian Duffield said, “Oh, we already recorded season two and it’s already written!” So you’re kind of like waiting for word (on season 2’s greenlight)? How long do you have to wait to get going?

Willis (to Legendary representative)
Um, do you know more about timeline or..?

Chris
I mean, it’s only been out what, like two weeks so its kind of too early right? Let it marinate for a bit.

Jacob Robinson
Tell your readers to watch it and hopefully we’ll get a second season and can resolve that cliffhanger.

Willis
More (story) we’d like to tell.

Chris
I don’t know if it was mentioned, I think I may have missed it, but when exactly does it take place? Because there was the Birth of Kong comic, which is supposed to take place after Kong: Skull Island and there’s somebody who’s still on the island there. When exactly is it? I’ve heard like 90’s and that was kind of the best I can get.

Willis
Nineties is, is about right. I don’t remember the exact time period.

Jacob
Between 93 and 94.

Chris
So it’s before the Birth of Kong?

Jacob
Yes.

Chris
Ok because that was 1995. One thing that Brian Duffield (series writer) had said (on Twitter) that there was no access to Toho monsters at all. I don’t expect Godzilla to show up or Ghidorah and stuff like that, but did you try or did it cross your mind to try and put in the smaller ones (monsters) that Toho has just to kind of keep it kind of “MonsterVerse”?

Willis
I know that we wanted to try to create as many new characters as we could for the show, but, you know, you borrow as much reference as you can from what’s available. You know what I mean? So what we could try to sneak in, you know, we certainly tried, but I know that we wanted to try to, like I said create as many new characters, new creatures as we could for this.

Chris
So you said sneak in. Were there like inspirations from other Toho monsters in this?

Willis
Yes and no, because, again, it was kind of a thing. It’s like what were we kind of allowed to use? But what could we play with? But taking as much inspiration as we could for some things, we definitely tried.

Chris
Can you say what they are?

Willis
I know that for the Kraken, the Kraken had a lot of different creatures inspiring that. So definitely trying to take little pieces from Toho monsters here and there. But yeah, but again, like I said, just really try to kind of go a different route and create what we could.

Jacob
I’m sure there’s an official party line from Legendary on this, Legendary has a wonderful partnership with Toho, but when it comes to Skull Island and even Jordan’s movie, that was very much original creatures that he came up with.

Chris
Yeah.

Jacob
That is, I think, viewed more as Legendary owned and controlled.

Chris
I think it was because like in King of the Monsters (2019 film), they had Mothra in there but like not a lot of screen time, and then Rodan had some cool stuff, but like again – not a lot of screen time.

Jacob
So I think to jump back to your first question, which is just, you know the… So I’m producing a deal with Legendary, the sort of genesis was I thought it’d be really cool to do sort of a “Goonies on Skull Island”. Like how do you get a very different tone, kind of trying to do, in a way, what I think “Animatrix” was able to get away with by like having this really established universe but play with tone and genre to try and do this sort of tangential thing. It’s very character forward. And the appeal to me in part with Skull Island was again the like… some of it had been established in Jordan’s movie, some of it had been touched upon in other points, but there was sort of this fertile ground to create new creatures to play. It was really just a fun kind of somewhat open sandbox. And Brian’s been a friend for years, and I approached him because I knew the two of his four favorite movies were Godzilla and Jurassic Park and he sort of steered it even a little older than I had initially conceived, but he really jived with that and that’s how we kicked this thing off. But back to sort of the Toho and all, I think that’s… like we never even started conversations with Toho because it felt like this was just an opportunity to be our own sandbox, you know?

Chris
One thing that was, that kind of caught people is that the Kong in the show looked different than the one on the poster. Like, “Why is he brown?” And I guess there was one shot in the show when he was brown – would you like to address that?

Willis
I’ve been seeing that pop up a lot and to address that – so his fur color is a dark brown, but with a lot of the color grading and a lot of the lighting that we did in post over the animation, it kind of changed how he looked within a particular shot or a particular environment. So even though it is a dark brown, it may appear a darker color on screen. You saw that a lot in the final sequences of the last episode with them being on the ocean towards the beach. We just kind of went with more blue filters there. And I think that that kind of dropped his color down a bit. So it’s like, it is a dark brown, but just through the post process, it kind of came out darker.

Chris
I thought it was interesting how he kind of had his own falcon, as it were. Did you ever give it a name?

Jacob
You know what’s really funny is that Brian, the only original creatures I think that had names were the “Night Boys” which were the creatures that comprised the tree, and was it the “Deathmeleons”?

Willis
The Deathmeleons, yes.

Jacob
The Chameleons and the others were unnamed. So we’re discussing right now, and Legendary has this incredible mythology team that developed “Hey, here’s all the flora and fauna that would exist on here.” And so I think we’re working with them to now go back and try to figure out, because I think we were pleasantly surprised by sort of the fan outrage like, “Well, what are they called?”

Chris
Yeah cause on the site we have like, you know, here’s the name, how much they weigh (referring to Toho Kingdom’s Monster Bios section).

Willis and Jacob
Yeah.

Chris
What episodes are they in and all the other stuff. So it’s like, you know, and I’m not in charge of any of that.

Jacob
I would love that you send your best recommendations our way. Because in our script, we were sort of like, “Well, we’re never going to call them anything.”

Chris
Would you guys be open to that? I mean, because like there was the Titanis Doug thing with the Godzilla vs. Kong, you know what I’m talking about?

Willis
Yeah

Chris
Because it looked like the dog from “Up”.

Jacob
That’s a Legendary decision, but all I’ll say is, I know Brian for a fact if anyone wants to send proposals his way, we’d absolutely love to hear them, that would be incredible.

Chris
I’ve seen a lot of Disney+ – they’re kind of like removing content and no one can watch the stuff anymore. Is or was there a Blu-ray or 4K planned for this?

Jacob
We haven’t had that a conversation. That’ll ultimately be a Legendary decision with that, you know?

Chris
Yeah.

Jacob
Uh, but I would certainly hope so.

Willis
Yeah, I think that would be awesome if we had that.

Jacob
There was a lot of blood, sweat, and tears into this so. *laughs*

Willis
So it’s especially like you said with, with the content being removed, it’s always nice to have that record that you can always go to.

Chris
Yeah. Before it was like, “Oh, I got too many Blu-rays and I can just watch it on streaming!” And now it’s like, “Oh, I can’t watch this anymore.”

Willis
Yeah, I’m the same way. I have shelves full of Blu-rays and stuff like that, but I have a PS5 that’s digital, so I’m like, I have this stuff, but it’s, you know everything is digital now, it’s easier to go to there, but now that they’re removing everything, I’m like, I’m glad I kept that stuff.

Chris
Did you ever go into Dog’s origins?

Willis
A bit internally.

Jacob
You mean in terms of origins, you mean past being on Annie’s Island?

Chris
Yeah.

Jacob
In terms of origin it was just Dog was on there and in terms of true origin that was something Brian had from the word “go”, like that was that was… his very initial pitch was sort of, he wanted to do a story about a girl and her like smaller, not Titan sized, but creature and that relationship and that was like the core that that spawned the rest of this. So Dog was in from day one. We didn’t know he was going to be called Dog.

Chris
Did you have access to the other characters from Skull Island, like Conrad and Weaver that (who) you could have put into this?

Jacob
We didn’t, because of the chronology of it and we were trying to stay very much separate from… so it sort of… trying to find the time period when there wouldn’t be anyone else on the island. Just because, again, when you’re talking about reading mythologies and everything. Like it was sort of by design that we picked this time so that we wouldn’t hit others.

Chris
What things would you like to get into that were kind of explained or shown in Season one that you’d like to get into Season two? If you can hint.

Jacob (to Willis)
You want to go?

Willis
I need to think a little bit. *laughs*

Chris
Very on the spot question.

Willis
Yeah.

Jacob
I don’t know so much that there’s what I would like to see, because I feel like we kind of left it on the on the floor for a season, for what we wanted season one to be, I think season two, from what we’ve mapped out so far, will have a slightly different feel in that you already know these characters. A lot of season one is sort of the introduction, to finding each other, and we sort of moved past that. I think it’s fair to say that Kong has a more central character or would be a more central character in the second season, but I think it’s the same sort of the same tone and the same heart, humor, and there’s not a lot that I really wish… there wasn’t a cutting room floor where like, “Oh man, I really wish we would’ve gotten that in.”

Willis
Yeah. And it just kind of in the general interest of continuing this story with these characters, like you said, in the process of making the first season, you know, you fall in love with these characters and just what with their story and what they’re doing, so just getting the chance to continue that, I think would be would be great for me.

Chris
Do you have a favorite character?

Willis
Do I have a favorite character? That’s that’s not a fair question. *laughs*

Chris
Well, is there is there one that took more time to tune as opposed to the rest?

Willis
I wouldn’t say took more time to tune necessarily, because I think Bryan did a great job.

Chris
Yeah.

Willis
With all of the characters. If I if I had to pick a favorite, I would say probably Charlie because of he had a lot more of the comedic moments in the show. And I think that Nicolas did a fantastic job with a lot of his reads. So there was just a lot to work with there that when we get the voice tracks in, it just gets more and more ideas we just come up with like, “Oh, okay, the way he said that there, we can do a lot with that expression.” So it’s a very fun character to work with.

Chris
There is a Skull Crawler that appeared just in a flashback, but they’re nowhere to be found on the island are they..? Although they ended up in Godzilla vs. Kong where they seem to be bred and manufactured, can you say where they went, or what their absence is?

Jacob
Elsewhere on the island..?

Willis
Oh yeah, it’s such a large island that we wanted to explore as many parts as we could, and we looked at the different sections of the island as kind of their own ecosystems in certain ways. So to have you know, different types of flora and fauna within the different regions and that would create its own different animals in each and each section. And just kind of for that moment in that episode, that was where the Skull Crawlers reside so.

Chris
So you guys kind of can’t wait to get back season two, right?

Willis
Yeah.

Jacob
You can’t see but my fingers are crossed!

Willis
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chris
All right. Well cool, Thank you!