Producers Karen Ryan and Julie Zackary sat down with io9 to tell this remarkable tale of second chances.
Its the film to root for this weekend at the Oscars.
Sabina Graves, io9: Lets talk about the adaptation of the graphic novel.
Image: Netflix
What made you want to sign on to bring it to life?
When the opportunity [came] to go to Blue Sky to make it happen, I grabbed it.
I related to that so much.
Image: Netflix
Its a very, very cool thing.
In fact, Karen, I think on my interview you gave me the book.
We opened up the story conversation to everybody in the building.
We knew that this novel was speaking to people and we wanted to hear everyones different stories.
So we invited people in.
Specifically members of the LGBTQ+ community.
And once we unlocked that there was never a question that we needed to make this film happen.
We had to make this movie.
So that was driving us through all of the change.
During the time we were given a chance to take a stab at find a new buyer for it.
And we all connected to it so deeply.
We literally turned from filmmakers into film sellers.
We had no idea what we were doing.
We called in every favor.
We called in other studios to get advice.
We called colleagues from other places to get advice.
We had called relatives.
We had called bankers.
Nobody knew what we were doingthere was no playbook to follow.
This is a no-brainer for me.
What do you guys need to make this movie?
And then without even blinking, we were now in production as an independent studio with Annapurna.
But also, in retrospect, I look at what we did… we were bonkers.
io9: Its really badass, though, to be real.
Ryan: We naively just wouldnt give up.
We just knew we couldnt stop.
Theres so many projects are canceled all of the time for lots of different reasons.
So were definitely not the first company film to go through this.
We just put our heads down and didnt take no for an answer and just kept trying.
And they put themselves into it.
That to me means theres a bright, bright future.
And I want to see more of that.
And I think were going to.
Zackary: To add to that is, is Netflix has been an amazing partner the whole way.
io9: Thats so awesome.
I just hope that more people discover the film as time goes on.
And I wish you all luck during the Oscars.
Its going to be a big week for sure!
Watch Nimona on Netflix.
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