JWK: Chris, we spoke about a year ago when The Wingfeather Saga was in the planning stages. How does it feel for the both of you now that the TV series is actually taking flight?

Andrew Peterson: Man, I feel just massive excitement – and relief, to be honest. We’ve been working on it for so long and to finally have this thing (crossing) the finish line – which really isn’t a finish line, it’s the beginning of a whole new part of the thing but, man, yeah, we’ve just been holding it in for so long.

JWK: What do you think makes these books so popular?

AP: I’m gonna let Chris answer that one.

Chris Wall: I think, John, as a fan – I identify myself as Fan #1 over here having got to read the books as Andrew published them – I think (there’s) the lineage they share with The Chronicles of Narnia and Lord of the Rings. (Also) the winsome and whimsical but epic journey of kids and their families is really extinct (in today’s culture). You know, so many of these stories where a kid is gonna set out to discover their identity and how they fit into the world and what challenges to take on are done with kids only. The parents are ditched. This is a story that says no, the whole family (is) better together. That along with just the kind of deeper redemptive themes and truths that are kinda effortlessly inside the story. They’re not overt. They’re not over the top. They’re not here to tell you some truth in some heavy-handed way. They’re just kind of in the way the characters respond to the world around them. It just was really deep and meaningful to our family as we read them and I think, as the books have found their way over the years to different families, it’s become kind of this little hidden jewel that now has grown quite a lot. In the last couple of years the audience for these books has kind of exploded as more and more people have discovered them.

JWK: Andrew, how did you come up with the concept? Were you inspired by The Chronicles of Narnia and Lord of the Rings and those kinds of stories?

AP: Yeah, I grew up reading fantasy voraciously. I just have always loved those kinds of stories. Any big epic sword-swinging adventure was right up my alley when I was a kid. Once I had my own kids, we read a lot as a family together. It was just such a precious time – a precious season – for our family to read together and I wanted to see what it was like to try to write one of those kinds of stories.

JWK: Were you surprised that it connected so well with the audience?

AP: Yeah, I was actually. I mean I hoped that that would happen but it has been a wild ride for the last several years. You know, it took me about ten years to write all four books because I was doing it in between my music career. So, it took a long time. It was just a really slow burn. The books did really well in their first iteration but then when Penguin Random House picked them up it gave them two covers and kind of a big push a couple of years ago. It was just amazing to see the way the books (took off). I don’t know. People seemed to be hungry for that same kind of thing that I was hungry for when I was writing them.

JWK: Are you happy with how the series has turned out, at least the first season?

AP: Man, I could not be happier about it. You know, I’ve always loved film and animation and the fact that we were able to come at this with a different approach and make something that looks really unique and really handcrafted and beautiful is thrilling to me. I don’t know. I guess that’s the shortest way I could answer that question. Chris?

CW: Gosh, when you set out on a dream like this the stakes are high, right? As a fan and knowing the audience expectation, whenever your adapting a story that’s beloved you want to try to do something special in that process and I could not be happier with what’s come out of this amazing team of artists (who demonstrated) just kind of a passion for the space we’re in and the kind of story we’re telling – each department, from your painters to your animators and everybody in between really contributing. Animation is such a collaborative art form. We really felt like everybody has been able to buy in and contribute.

JWK: Did you both share an identical vision for the show or did you each have slightly different ideas that meshed together? How did that work?

CW: (laughs) We were perfectly in sync! We never disagreed ever!

AP: I would just say that it has been remarkable how much we have shared in the vision for what this thing needs to look like. We both have this idea for it to be authentic and real and not feel like a little kids cartoon but to be like a bigger, more epic story. From a visual standpoint, I think our tastes are just really closely aligned. There’s been very little disagreement over what the show ought to look or feel like.

CW: Let me jump in here. I think that’s a great question. I think Andrew and I both in setting out to do this together, you know, we decided to build this company together, to partner up in early 2016 to create our Shining Isle Productions company to develop The Wingfeather Saga and it was because of that. It was because of the spirit of cooperation. I wanted his input deeply into what we were gonna make here and he so graciously trusted me to come alongside him and bring all the tools necessary to make it happen. It’s been just a remarkable partnership. You see this a lot in art, where collaborations happen that generate greater than the sum of their parts. I think this is one of those where there’s shared love for this kind of story – I grew up reading fantasy stories too – and this is, I think, that.

The other thing that’s really interesting is the story. You imagine it kind of exists in a real space – and that Andrew, at one point, sat down and wrote his version of it as though he was watching it, you know, as a book – and then we, as an animated series, get to write our own version of it, right? We get to see the same story, same characters, same events – but we see them from a different vantage so we get go draw attention to things that maybe weren’t brought up in the books and we get to show some (other) things. It’s a fresh experience. For people who have read the books, they get to watch the series and be delighted again with reminders of things that certainly were in the book but then unpacking in new ways things that maybe they didn’t read in the books.

JWK: What do you both hope people will take from the TV series that may be similar to what they got out of the books but maybe a bit different too?

AP: I would just say that, first and foremost, we’re just trying to tell a really good story and let families experience together a big adventure that the adults, the teenagers and the kids will all enjoy in different ways. That’s our primary goal. What happens after that, you know, we have hopes for it. I hope that people will feel a flutter in their stomach – you know that goosebumpy thing that only a good story can do. I hope that people will experience something that will stick with them. My hope is that when a kid reads the last page of the last book that they lie in bed and they can feel the warmth of a good story well told. Those are the hopes that I have. All we can do is really work as hard to try to tell the best, most beautiful story we can.

JWK: How many episodes are there in the first season?

CW: There are six episodes in Season 1 that largely tell the story from the first book. They are half-hour episodes and they’re chapter by chapter. So, we are looking forward to families sitting down as they’re released. We’re (releasing new episodes) every other week…so they can unfold a chapter and then have time to think about it and talk about it with their friends…Our hope is to tell the entire four-book fantasy series over seven seasons. There are storylines we’re gonna break in different ways. We are actually in preproduction now on Season 2…We’re eager to keep the story going not have to wait too long. I think a lot of us really don’t like waiting so long between our storytelling. We’re eager to keep going and started that process a few months ago.

JWK: The idea of dropping an episode every two weeks – as opposed to an entire season all at once – is a sort of throwback to traditional television. It’s a different experience watching one episode at a time and having time to  think about it for a while and binging an entire season all at once. Would you agree?

CW: Very much. I am a huge fan of unfolding stories – because then you’re in synchronicity with your friends and your community. We’ve all had great experiences with television series that did that – where we could week-by-week say “Did you the last episode?!” and “What did you think of this?!” I know we all got to do that with Rings of Power recently. I think that that is just a great way. In our format, we’re (releasing) every other week, giving us some space there…I’m excited about (viewers) engaging in conversation between those episodes.

JWK: Do you each have a favorite episode from Season 1?

AP: I think Episode 3 is the one. There’s a lot of groundwork that happens in Episodes 1 & 2 where we’re introducing the world and the characters. Episode 3 feels like the one where the rubber meets the road and things really ratchet up. The intensity and the action really starts to find its legs.

CW: Episode 3 is this really special kind of midseason moment where the stakes of the world really change. I love all of the episodes equally. I don’t have a favorite child but Episode 3 is pretty special.

JWK: Looking ahead, do you have any aspirations of one day doing a live-action version of The Wingfeather Saga?

AP: I’ll wait and see if that happens. The story is so perfectly suited to animation. You know, we kicked around live action. We talked about it as a possibility at one point. We talked about releasing them as films, not as a TV show for a minute. You know, we’ve explored a lot of different possibilities but for a long time we both we’ve both just believed that a serial series like this is the best way to tell this particular story. I’m a fan of animation anyway but I just really think that the tone of the story is really, really well suited for the way we’re telling it.

JWK: You mentioned earlier that you formed a production company called Shining Isle Productions. Do you plan on producing other projects?

CW: Yeah. We’re really interested in stories like Wingfeather that, like Andrew said earlier, do their work in kind of thrilling an audience and awakening that sense of deep longing that C.S. Lewis talked about – like what else is there in the mystery of my experience in the world that stories can do? Music has a similar effect. Music is really a big part of our series. We think that Wingfeather is kind of the first one to start with and there are other stories like it in the world that we’d love to come alongside and help bring to life in the same way…

…We’re so excited about the art and animation style that we’ve been able to create here. You know when you’re a small independent studio the risk is you go out and make kind of a lesser version of what the big studios are making. We’ve made a real intentional choice to create something that is full of craft and has an artist’s handprint all over it and…a really distinct animation style that looks like hand paintings – because it is. It’s a real turn away from kind of the Pixar standard of CGI animation. So, not only in the storycraft…but in the visual craft (we’ve) been able to bring something really special to an audience that is uncommon. Most of the independent studios like ours would produce kind of what everybody else is doing, right? We’ve made some really strong choices. It’s been difficult but the result is something that is unlike anything families have seen. We’re very proud of that and we think it’s a real special moment in the artistic craft of television animation that we get to be a part of.

John W. Kennedy is a writer, producer and media development consultant specializing in television and movie projects that uphold positive timeless values, including trust in God.