It’s been a long journey for Nimona. Production on ND Stevenson’s web comic-turned-graphic novel began with the now-closed Blue Sky Studios back in 2015. Six years later, the studio became a casualty of Disney’s 2019 acquisition of Fox, and production was canceled along with a number of other Blue Sky projects (not to mention that this particular feature had already been met with resistance from Disney higher-ups for its inclusion of queer romance).

However, Nimona was rescued through a collaboration between Annapurna Pictures and Netflix, with Blue Sky veterans and Spies in Disguise directors Nick Bruno and Troy Quane taking over the helm. Early reactions have been rather emphatic, with Letterboxd like Jaime Rebanal highlighting how “it isn’t afraid to present itself as an allegory for how queerness is treated, especially among young audiences, by the ruling adults.”

The film—set in a fantasy kingdom—follows Ballister Boldheart (Riz Ahmed), a knight who becomes public enemy number one after being framed for a crime he didn’t commit. Ballister’s new reputation as a villain brings him into with Nimona (Chloë Grace Moretz), a shapeshifting teenager made an outcast by her powers, who now wants to be his sidekick. The offbeat ensemble consists of a veritable round-table of knights: Ballister’s dreamy love interest Ambrosius Goldenloin (Eugene Lee Yang), Thoddeus “Todd” Sureblade (Beck Bennett), Nate Knight (RuPaul) and bumbling squire Diego (Julio Torres).

Bruno and Quake’s team embrace a rather unique graphic style, weaving a sense of cartoonishness through its textures while lovingly adapting Stevenson’s compelling mixture of sci-fi and medieval fantasy. And it’s working for Letterboxd : “It’s sweet, it’s thought out, it’s so beautiful to look at,” writes Sol, while Lee Smallwood says Nimona is “proof once again that in this current era, animation is here to absolutely dominate. What a charming, hilarious and creative movie. While it has the generic beats you expect, what it does with them is truly fantastic. A true triumph in animation.”

As it should, the film is also attracting bouquets for its queerness, with Jeroen observing that “Nimona is not going to fix problems but it did feel like a soft embrace on the right day,” while Lyelelle simply shouts “GAY KNIGHTS!!!!”. On the day of Nimona’s Annecy International Animation Film Festival premiere, we caught up lakeside with the directors—as well as Stevenson—to chat about the playful animated adaptation of his shape-shifting heroine.

What was it like carrying the project forward from that point?
Nick Bruno: I mean, it was real easy. [Laughs.] No, honest to God, the project is amazing. Nimona, the character, is amazing. ND’s amazing. And that’s why we’re still here, right? It has such great themes, and it was something that—even though we were shut down by Disney and it seemed impossible to come back from the dead—we just believed so much in: a love letter to all those who feel misunderstood. It became incredibly important to get that out into the world.

It was really just us on cell phones calling around. We had the reels of the movie for people to watch, and we got really lucky to have [executive producer] Megan Ellison and Annapurna watch the reels, fall in love with the movie and say, ‘This is something I needed when I was a kid.’ She came in, saved us and we got DNEG Animation, who was incredible. That’s why the movie looks so amazing, and that’s why we’re here today.

What did you want to preserve about the graphic novel and what did you decide to adjust about its look for the film?
TQ: We wanted to pay homage to the graphic novel roots of the project, which is one reason for these stylized approaches we took to the film. We knew we needed to broaden the character design a little bit more, to open the world. We wanted to keep that feeling of this implied medieval future, which is a crazy world to play in with those opposite ends of a timeline. Everything we did, we wanted to make sure it came back to the thematics and the storytelling: this idea of a medieval future, where you move forward in time, but the thinking is still sort of rooted in the past.

The movie’s made in CG, but we really wanted to come up with this two-and-a-half-D sort of look, a nod back to that traditional fantasy animation style of the classic movies, like The Sword in the Stone or Sleeping Beauty, that felt right for it, but still had the technological background. [We were] playing back into that theme, and then keeping that graphic idea of when you’re closer to characters, you see more detail, and the further we get away from elements, the more basic the impressions of that object become. That in itself is a reflection of this idea that the closer we allow people to get to us, the more we see their full selves. We see them for all their details, and the further away we hold people from ourselves, we only get a general impression. We start making judgements based on broad concepts instead of seeing who the individual is.

We still love the idea of this larger-than-life personality. Eugene Lee Yang brings this charisma and this charm and this big personality, but then can still find that really sweet, stumbling around [quality]. He’s trying to live up to these expectations that are thrust on him that he never asked for. He’s lived within that privilege for so long—what do you do when that privilege is challenged? Do you stand up for what you truly believe in? Do you fall in line with what everyone tells you you’ve been and what you’re supposed to be? We wanted to make sure that the character dealt with these intricacies.

NDS: What was so cool for me about seeing that process was that he is a ridiculous character in the comic. Early on there, the Todd [Beck Bennett] design was originally Goldenloin, with all the hair. But there were things that ended up just feeling wrong; it felt like people were making fun of him for being feminine in some ways, for having this long hair and everything.

He started turning into this more heroic character, the foil to Ballister. They both really believe in justice. They come from different places and they end up on different sides. Honestly, their relationship in the book is pretty garbage. Well, fun garbage. It’s like, ‘Oh, boys. Oh no. Oh, no, no.’ But seeing this super tender and super beautiful romance between the two of them was, for me, a breath of fresh air. You don't see that a lot.

TQ: The thing we loved about the complexity that did come from the book, is [that] while Ballister’s committing crimes and Goldenloin’s stopping them, yes, it’s because of roles that they’re cast in, but also because they enjoy spending time together, and that’s the way they can do it. But Goldenloin takes Ballister’s arm, and then watching Ballister make excuses for it and find reasoning for it, and watching Goldenloin suffer through the guilt of that… There was a complexity in that aspect of the relationship that we wanted to preserve and really bring forward.

NDS: He’s so different, but he’s still very familiar in that way. Now we get to enjoy both, which is cool!

NDS: I’ve been obsessed with shape-shifters my entire life, which is what led to the creation of the comic. You think that this girl form is Nimona’s real self, but what I found so interesting about shape-shifters is that everyone always wants them to have some understandable version of themselves. What if she just didn’t? What if, her turning into a different animal, that is the point, that is her? She is the transformation. She doesn’t just have one body; that is her real body. All of them are her. It confronts our discomfort with things that we don’t understand, or things that are new and unfamiliar to us. Maybe you’re not going to understand this, but it doesn’t mean that you can’t accept and love this person, even if you don’t get it right away. That's what shape-shifters are to me.