Relating to princess songs, there’s no larger identify within the sport than Alan Menken. That’s why Skydance Animation turned to the legendary eight-time Oscar winner to jot down music for and rating its sweeping new animated musical “Spellbound.”

Within the movie, streaming now on Netflix, Rachel Zegler stars as Princess Ellian, a young person who seeks to interrupt a spell that’s turned her royal mother and father (Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem) into monsters. John Lithgow, Jennifer Lewis, Tituss Burgess and Nathan Lane additionally lend their voices to the whimsical fairytale epic.

“The Little Mermaid,” “Aladdin” and “Magnificence and the Beast” composer Menken was joined by frequent collaborator Glenn Slater (“Tangled”), who served because the undertaking’s lyricist. “Glenn Slater actually captures the sensation that goes together with Alan’s music in such a fantastic means,” Zegler says in an unique new featurette in regards to the making of the movie’s music. “Alan and Glenn collectively as a crew is a match made in heaven.”

Zegler says she first got here onto the undertaking as a scratch vocalist to sing for demo recordings, however was finally introduced on to voice Ellian for actual – one thing she did over the course of practically 5 years. “I labored on it steadily all through ‘Shazam’ and ‘Snow White,’ going into totally different studios all world wide,” Zegler informed Selection earlier this 12 months throughout her cowl story interview, raving in regards to the joys of recording voiceover from anyplace on the earth. “Javier was in Jordan doing ‘Dune,’ so he would actually get off set, sand all over the place, and get within the sales space!”

“This woman is unbelievable. I imply, she has probably the most excellent voice,” Kidman says of Zegler within the new featurette. “The music is gorgeous, and it’s additionally basic.”

For Zegler, singing Menken and Slater’s music is her personal real-life fairytale. “I’m very grateful,” she says. “Alan did the soundtrack of my childhood, and now the soundtrack of my first animated film.”

Beneath, Menken and Slater break down their course of for crafting the music of “Spellbound” in an interview with Selection.

Ellian clues the viewers into her unconventional scenario with a full of life opening quantity, “My Dad and mom are Monsters.” How did you land on that fourth-wall-breaking tone for the introduction to this character?

Glenn Slater: One of many issues that we had been very acutely aware of was, as a result of that is primarily based on actual household dynamics that you’d expertise in the true world, we needed to be sure that we had been actually honoring precisely how folks would act in the true world. We had been conceiving Ellian as a 15-year-old woman, and a 15-year-old woman right this moment could be speaking into her telephone, breaking the fourth wall. We very a lot needed to seize that sort of the slanginess, the best way that that you just discuss to your folks over social media, the best way that you’d present folks by social media what your world appears like. That was very current in our minds in creating the character and in that opening second. This can be a teenage woman you realize, not a fairy story princess from a storybook.

After all, that bubbly exuberance fades away and turns to longing in her subsequent large track, “The Manner It Was Earlier than.” How did you start to craft that ballad, understanding it will be the emotional core of the movie?

Alan Menken: You’ll be able to see it within the precise animation, while you see the this damaged piano, and the drip of water simply hitting the notes. One thing that was stunning is damaged, and that sort of works its means into the intro of the track. The track is a eager for one thing that has been damaged, and the wish to put again collectively.

Slater: It’s the primary track that we wrote for the piece. It was written earlier than we actually even had the plot nailed down, and we had been sitting round a desk and discussing the character and what she needs, and the way this was totally different than abnormal fairy story characters. Phrases like “longing and unhappy,” however “hopeful and nice,” got here collectively. Alan simply sort of sat down on the piano and mentioned, “Oh, like this?” It was a kind of moments that you just always remember.

Menken: Often it takes somewhat extra prompting!

Slater: Alan is just like the world’s most subtle music AI. You feed him prompts: she’s comfortable, however she’s courageous, and she or he hasn’t seen her mother and father in a very long time, and it’s sort of like that feeling while you open up a gift, but it surely’s not what you needed. And he’s like, “Oh, like this!”

Menken: I’m truly an audio animatronic illustration of Alan Menken.

Why was Rachel Zegler the best selection for Princess Ellian’s voice?

Slater: I believe she was just about [director] Vicky Jenson’s first selection from the get go, and we had been all very excited when she signed on, as a result of she’s sort of wonderful. She’s of the technology that grew up with Disney motion pictures. So she has fully internalized what a Disney heroine appears like and seems like, however she’s additionally an excellent actress, so she was in a position to take that template and provides it her personal explicit spin, and dig into the specifics of this character and make her really feel like an actual individual. She simply obtained into the studio and nailed it.

One other standout quantity is John Lithgow’s showstopping “I May Get Used to This.” It simply sounds such as you two had a blast engaged on it, with lyrics like “It’s greater than marvelous / How have I lived my entire dwell larva-less?”

Menken: Or “I might get used to this / In some way I can’t assist however shake my large fats caboose to this!”

Slater: That was the final track that we wrote. It was a second the place we had this pretty critical second act happening, a number of, a number of twists and turns that had been fairly weighty emotionally. And we saved saying, “It seems like we want a manufacturing quantity.” And we realized that we had John Lithgow aboard. Let’s determine one thing out! He has such an amazing voice, and such nice comedian timing that we simply labored off his pure sound and got here up with that.

Menken: And we had to make use of the Flinks as a as a connector to a second that will principally encapsulate this very cultured man now consuming larva and going, “Oh!”

On that notice, is there a particular lyric from these songs that you just’re notably happy with?

Menken: “Larva-less.”

Slater: I believe that’s happening my tombstone. “Right here lies Glenn Slater: Larva-less.”

Menken: You recognize, the simplest ones and affecting ones are those that you just don’t discover. It’s the moments that basically seize your coronary heart that which might be a very powerful ones.

Slater: We all the time say that, if we do our jobs accurately, you don’t consider Alan’s music or my lyrics, you simply consider that character singing. What’s the best way that they discuss and the best way that they really feel? The songs the place you keep in mind the strains are when the characters are notably cultured or intelligent or witty, so the lyrics by their very own witty. However when you may have characters just like the mom and father on this film who can barely communicate, the lyrics aren’t essentially intelligent, however hopefully they seize that sense of struggling to specific themselves and struggling to search out the best phrases and to make an emotional connection. It’s not going to it’s not going to really feel like Sondheim, but it surely’s going to hopefully really feel like the best factor from these characters at that second.

You two have collaborated collectively on so many tasks, from “Tangled” to “Galavant.” What retains you coming again and eager to work with one another repeatedly?

Menken: It’s an amazing course of between us. We’re fairly opposites within the room. I are likely to go for the massive emotional gestalt and the drive within the story of the track. Glenn is wanting on the dramaturgical structure, and the way do you make that work? We’ve been within the trenches collectively. I can’t keep in mind a time once we weren’t engaged on one thing collectively. It actually jogs my memory of my course of with [late collaborator Howard Ashman] rather a lot. It will get smoother and smoother with every collaboration. However we each know that anytime we strategy a brand new undertaking, we’re going to have to interrupt all the things down and reinvent the wheel with a view to discover the voice of this undertaking that’s distinctive to this one. The variety of songs we threw out on this one, we might have a complete different musical simply with these!

Slater: That’s a key a part of any undertaking and any collaboration: having the religion in your collaborator that you would be able to throw issues out, understanding that you just and your collaborator are going to give you one thing even higher each time, is one thing that you just don’t actually get with everybody. Figuring out that I’m going to get an Alan Menken basic, it doesn’t matter what the thought is, irrespective of what number of permutations it goes by, we’re going to finish up with a kind of melodies that you would be able to’t get out of your head.

This interview has been edited for size and readability. Selome Hailu contributed reporting to this story.