The new animated feature “Swapped” from Skydance Animation and “Tangled” director Nathan Greno has arrived on Netflix. And it’s already a huge hit.
According to the streamer, the movie amassed an astonishing 38.7 million views in its first seven days, putting it at No. 1 on the English film list for the week. That number was also enough to make it the most-viewed Netflix animated movie in a single week ever – more than recent hits like “Leo” and, yes, even “KPop Demon Hunters.”
If you haven’t watched the movie yet, it’s a charming story set in a fantastical world. Oscar winner Michael B. Jordan voices Ollie, a pookoo (a small, rodent-like creature), who avoids interaction with bird-like creatures called javans, who often steal the same food that the pookoo eat. One day, thanks to a magical flower, Ollie trades places with a javan named Ivy (Juno Temple), leading them on a crazy adventure to return to their original bodies. It’s all about working together and communication, themes that audiences clearly are hungry for.
Greno told TheWrap that the team behind “Swapped” had been working on the movie for more than six years, and that it was always a story about empathy.
“The idea was looking at today’s climate, especially six years ago, looking at where things were at. It’s always meant to be entertainment. You want to put something on that’s a fun rollercoaster to watch,” Greno explained. “But at the same time, you want to put a message out there that could do something good, add something positive to the world and here we are. You know, six years later, we still need this movie.”
“We wanted a movie that is about empathy, that has a nice message for the audience, without it feeling like, here’s a lesson for you to learn,” added producer Mary Ellen Bauder Andrews. “We just wanted to have a nice takeaway and have an optimistic-feeling film, but not like, these are the lessons learned.”
Initially, “Swapped” was very different – it was once about four teenagers with superpowers “that could not be more different from one another.” They started to go down the road of making that version of the movie, but as Greno & Co. started doing research on empathy, they kept encountering the idea of walking a mile in someone else’s shoes – “getting out of your bubble and gaining perspective,” as Greno put it.
“Everything kept speaking to a different type of movie,” he added. They kept trying to graft that idea onto the original concept with the teenage superheroes. But it wasn’t working.
One day, Greno walked into Skydance Animation chief John Lasseter’s office. “I said, I think we’re doing the movie wrong.’ And he’s like, ‘What are you talking about?’ And I said, ‘I think the movie should be about this – walking a mile in someone else’s shoes. It’s a transformation movie,’” Greno remembered. He pitched Lasseter on the idea of using the camera to approximate what it’s like looking through someone else’s eyes “to literally see the movie different.”
Lasseter agreed and asked Greno what he wanted to do. “I want to blow the movie up,” Greno told him. Lasseter gave him the okay to do it.
This was about a year into the process of making “Swapped.” Once they started anew, the production team switched from human characters to animals – because in body-swapping movies like “Freaky Friday” or “Like Father, Like Son,” it’s always two humans that switch places. Lasseter pitched the idea of having no humans in the movie at all, which gave the movie its fantasy setting and somewhat-otherworldly feeling.
“It opened up the doors in a really interesting way of like, what if we created our own species? It was all about trying to create distance in order to tell a story about empathy. You want to create differences, you want to create the other,” said Greno. “And so in doing that, scale played a huge part of it, and so did this plant-to-animal spectrum thing. That played a huge part. And unlike ‘Jungle Book’ or movies we’ve seen before with talking animals, these species cannot speak to each other, which also felt very different and original and fresh.”
Obviously, audiences agreed and turned up big time for “Swapped,” a lovely movie with wonderful characters, big twists and a message that we can all get behind.
“Swapped” is now available to stream on Netflix.
