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Animated shows playing with horror themes and spooky characters seem to be quite the rage this fall. Premiering only a few weeks after DreamWorks’ Fright Krewe on Hulu, another DreamWorks production titled Curses! arrives October 27 on Apple TV+. Created and executive produced by Jim Cooper (DreamWorks Dragons) and Jeff Dixon (The Hurricane Heist), this hair-raising new series follows the adventures of two siblings who have to return artifacts stolen by their ancestors to rid their family of a horrible curse.
Writer and director John Krasinski (A Quiet Place) also serves as executive producer on Curses!, and Allyson Seeger is a co-executive producer. Leo Riley (Guardians of the Galaxy, Tron: Uprising) is supervising producer and director on the show.
Cooper and Dixon became friends because their kids went to the same kindergarten and elementary school. The pair began talking about their favorite movies and shows and eventually thought it would be fun if they combined their talents to write a family horror picture together. We caught up with the creators via email to about their new project.
Horror Fans at Heart
“Both of us had separate solo writing careers with very different focuses,” says Dixon. “Coop is a history and comedy buff and has worked on a lot of family animation projects. I’m a bit darker and love all things horror, and mostly worked on live-action scary projects. The one thing we shared, and bonded over, was our mutual dedication to our kids and family. In the end, we’re both just dads. When we decided to try and work together, all of our ideas seemed to smash our varying sensibilities together in a totally natural way. Curses! is the organic outcome of our brains — it’s horror, but comedic; it’s animated, but cinematic; and at the center of it all is a core of kids and family.”
The “family curse” part of the show came about when Cooper told Dixon about his own family history. “Basically, all the men in my father’s generation died before they were 50 years old,” says Cooper. “One day when we were looking through my grandpa’s photo album, we found a formal portrait of him (around three years old), in his finest clothes, holding a human skull. Since he lived in an Arizona copper mining town, we were pretty sure it wasn’t a prop skull, but a real one. My cousin yelled out, ‘I guess we now know the source of the family curse.’ When Jeff heard this, we started really playing with this idea of, what would you do if you discovered your family was cursed because of something your ancestors did, or perhaps something they collected? And voilà, Curses! was born.”
In early 2018, Cooper and Dixon sold the idea to DreamWorks. “Our kids were freshmen in high school at the time,” recalls Cooper. “We spent a few years developing the script and doing visual development, before going to series in early 2021. Now it is set to be released as our kids enter their junior year in college. So in a very real sense, it all started as our kids started their first day of school and has continued all the way to their collegiate experience!”
Curses! had about 60 crew members at DreamWorks, where almost all of the art development and one of the storyboard teams was based. The production also worked with House of Cool in Toronto who storyboarded the other episodes. The animation, which was done by CGCG in Taiwan, was created using Storyboard Pro, Maya, Nuke and Houdini.
‘When you see an object that is hundreds, if not thousands, of years old, you have to wonder about its path to where it is now, and I think Curses! really explores that in a way that will make it more than just a bunch of fun jokes and scares.’
— Curses! co-creator and exec producer Jim Cooper
The project attracted a star-studded voice cast as well. Emmy nominee Gabrielle Nevaeh (Monster High) and Andre Robinson (The Loud House) voice siblings Pandora and Russ, while Lyric Lewis, Reid Scott, Rhys Darby, James Marsters, Rhea Perlman, Phylicia Rashad and Robert Englund round out the ensemble cast.
The show’s creators are both quite proud of its overall look. “Our art director, David Chung, and supervising producer/supervising director, Leo Riley, developed a fantastic look for the show that is both beautiful and incredibly functional,” says Cooper. “While it is created in a 3D computer environment, the look is one that emulates the hand-drawn 2D ink work of the classic 1950s EC horror comic books. As a result, we are able to utilize the incredible camera moves and lighting of 3D production, while giving the show a unique handmade quality. On a practical side, it also allows us to augment our 3D assets with 2D assets that can serve as modern-day matte paintings. So this gives us flexibility in production that we might not otherwise have, while simultaneously giving us some incredible visuals.”
The Curses! duo says one of the reasons they wanted to create the show was so they could have a show they would love to watch with their kids. “Back in our childhoods, we loved challenging ourselves with what might be best called ‘gateway horror,’” notes Cooper. “Think of classic Steven Spielberg projects like Poltergeist or The Goonies. Things that weren’t just ‘spooky’ but had some real moments of surprise and dread. That is what I think we achieved with Curses!, a show that kids will be super intrigued by, and one that their parents will be excited to join them [in watching].”
He says another unique quality is the show’s ability to deal with complicated subjects such as history, repatriation of artifacts and the concept of cultural theft in a way that is both entertaining and thought-provoking. “When you see an object that is hundreds, if not thousands, of years old, you have to wonder about its path to where it is now,” he notes. “And I think Curses! really explores that in a way that will make it more than just a bunch of fun jokes and scares.”
Object Lessons
Cooper and Dixon have their fingers crossed that the show will make a big impact on viewers. “I’d hope they will look at the world slightly differently,” says Cooper. “I hope they will look at cool old objects and think, ‘I wonder how that ended up here? What was its story? Who were the people that created it or owned it?’ and that they would learn to put themselves in other people’s shoes. Because with each of our stories, there is a backstory of how those artifacts became cursed. And it is up to the family to figure out how they can make right for long-ago wrongs. In general, I think this world would be a much better place if people learned to try to understand how the past influences the present, and what we can do in the future to improve the situation for everybody.”
Dixon adds, “I hope audiences are able to really connect with these characters on a human level, relate their own thoughts and experiences to what they see on the screen, and go through all the emotions along the way. Then, my visceral answer is, ‘I want to scare some kids.’ Now, that may sound mean, but it’s not. Experiencing ‘safe fear,’ such as watching horror, is psychologically healthy. When I was a kid, it was the scary movies and TV shows that stuck with me. They allowed me to feel fear and overcome it. They connected with me on such a visceral level, that when I finished watching them, I felt accomplished. They felt like dares that boosted my self-esteem. I want some kids to experience those same kinds of feelings that I did. It warms my horror heart to think that we might actually be able to do that.”
Curses! premieres on Apple TV+ on October 27. Check out a brand-new clip below and see the previously released trailer here.
