AnimationWorld Magazine — September 6, 2018
A Girl and Her Robot: ‘Next Gen’ Arrives on Netflix
Set to debut on Netflix on Friday, September 7, CG-animated feature Next Gen is a funny, exciting and heartwarming adventure that explores the bittersweet nature of memory and celebrates the value of friendship. Written and directed by Kevin Adams and Joe Ksander, the offbeat action-comedy tells the story of the unlikely bond between an angry 12-year-old girl named Mai Su and a runaway combat robot, numbered 7723, as they team up to defeat a madman’s plans for world domination.
Next Gen is produced by Javier Zhang, Jeff Bell, Ken Zorniak, Patricia Hicks, Charlene Kelly and Olivia Hao. The Chinese-Canadian co-production was produced by China’s Baozou Manhua, with the animation provided by Toronto-based Tangent Animation. Netflix picked up worldwide rights (excluding China) to the film at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year in a much buzzed-about $30 million deal.
Based on an online comic about a damaged robot by anonymous Chinese television personality Wang Nima — who is best known for wearing a radish head mask — and produced by Baozou, Next Gen examines memory and loss amid complicated family relationships. The film stars Charlyne Yi as Mai, John Krasinski as 7723, David Cross as the loveable Steve Wozniak-inspired Dr. Rice, Michael Peña as a foul-mouthed French bulldog named Momo, Jason Sudeikis as corporate megalomaniac Justin Pin, and Constance Wu as Mai’s robot-addicted mother, Molly.
Next Gen is set in a high-tech city of the future called Grainland, a vibrant, buzzing world endowed with a level of detail usually only seen in live-action movies. Production designer Craig Sellars, who had previously worked on live-action films such as Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy and Robert Zemeckis’s forthcoming Marewncol, was brought on board early during pre-production in order to help create the look of Grainland, which combines a retro mid-century vibe with a futuristic aesthetic from the 1970s and 80s.
Adams and Ksander have collaborated since 2009, when they both worked on the animated feature 9, and discovered a shared love of Kung-Fu movies and The Abyss. A Toronto native, Adams began his career at Disney Feature Animation, where he worked on now-classic films like Hercules and The Emperor’s New Groove. He went on to production design at DreamWorks Animation and Reel FX Animation, and was the creative director of ARC Animation. Ksander grew up in Silicon Valley, where his obsession with monsters and spaceships drove him into a career in visual effects. He animated characters for movies like The Chronicles of Narnia, Pacific Rim and Transformers: Age of Extinction, and also worked as an animation director at Walt Disney Imagineering, where he animated the full-scale Na’vi Shaman figure for Pandora – The World of Avatar.