Photo Credit: Universal PicturesDog Man director and star Peter Hastings spoke to ComingSoon’s Tyler Treese about DreamWorks’ latest critically acclaimed animated movie. Hastings discussed the film’s many Easter eggs that reward multiple viewings, plus talked about working with Pete Davidson. The film is out now on Digital and will be released on Blu-ray and DVD on April 1, 2025.“When a faithful police dog and his human police officer owner are injured on the job, a harebrained surgery fuses the two of them together and Dog Man is born! As he embraces his new identity and strives to impress his Chief (Lil Rel Howery, Get Out), Dog Man must stop the villainous Petey the Cat (Pete Davidson, Saturday Night Live) from cloning himself and creating an evil kitten, doubling his evil abilities. The story takes a turn when the kitten forges an unexpected bond with Dog Man and in the process, they discover the power of family to bring even the most hostile foes together,” says the synopsis.Tyler Treese: Peter, I really enjoyed Dog Man. I wanted to ask you about the challenge of having a largely nonverbal protagonist, although I did see that you performed the barks yourself, so that had to be pretty special. But how is it having that main character not being able to speak exposition?Peter Hastings: It’s a little tricky. The thing is, he’s got a lot of people around him who talk a lot. So, they tend to cover a lot of ground, like the Chief when he is talking to Dog Man. But it was really important to retain his doginess. That was a question very early. Can we do this with a lead character who doesn’t speak? I watched a lot of Charlie Chaplin movies. I watched a bunch of silent comedy, and I’m go like, “Okay, expression can happen without people talking, even though a silent movie’s a different venue.” But there were times when I was writing where I’m going, this scene has to end because I can’t go any farther without him talking, and he’s not gonna talk. It was really about retaining a lovable dog character, and it would drastically change if he started talking. I didn’t really give him any Scooby-Doo [qualities], I let him just be a dog. That was sort of the goal.One thing about DreamWorks lately that I’ve really been loving is that the movies have had such unique looks to them. Dog Man is very stylized. I know it’s not stop motion, but there are moments where it feels like it is, and it is taking inspiration from it. How was it finding that distinct style? I did read that Dav wanted it to be stop motion at first. So, how was it like finding that middle ground?The thing is, we knew we weren’t gonna actually do a full stop motion thing, but then you start looking about it, and you’re like, “What is it about the feel of stop motion that’s appealing? What feels fun about that?” A lot of it is very much the feeling of looking at something that somebody had their hands on, and if you look at Fantastic Mr. Fox, it’s like you can see their fur moving because the person’s hands messed up their fur and stuff like that. There’s a charm to it and a handmade quality to that. So, what we wanted to bring is the feel of stop motion, plus the movie is primarily animated on twos, so there’s two frames for each picture instead of one frame of picture. So it makes it a little more staccato, which is what a lot of stop motion is. But it was really about keeping that sort of charm, the handmade feel, that we wanted to bring into the animation and to the whole look. Actually, we use this term “high-end handmade” to sort of guide us in terms of the design and in the animation.You worked previously on the Captain Underpants show and the specials that came out afterward. How did that familiarity with Dav Pilkey’s tone really help you with Dog Man?It helped a lot because I totally connect with his tone, his style, and his desire to be creative and to bust out and do crazy stuff. So when we did the TV show, we didn’t use any stories from the books. I sort of identified what a sort of a pattern of these books is, and we did completely original Captain Underpants stories for the series, and Dav loved them. So when it came time to do the movie, he was very interested in me doing the movie when Dreamworks approached him. So I just felt totally at home in doing that sort of intelligently silly, wacky, um, kind of stuff. So I identified that with it a lot. So it was pretty easy to do.What did it mean for you to get that cosign? Because that’s huge that the creator did request you.It’s great and I, but I felt totally comfortable with it. It wasn’t like somebody asking me to do something that I’m not familiar with it all. So, it was a lot of fun, and he’s tremendously supportive, and he told me, “Dog Man is so popular that I feel like I don’t even own it anymore. Everybody sort of owns Dog Man in their own sort of way.” In that sense, he’s also willing to let you run with it and to do what you know you need to do to sort of tell the story. So, he was very like, “I trust you. Go for it. Can’t wait to see it.” He actually didn’t see the movie until right before it opened. He kind of held off because he wanted to see it all finished.As I mentioned, I really enjoyed the film and one aspect that surprised me was I didn’t expect it to like tug on my heart as much as it did. Pete Davidson gives a very surprisingly heartfelt voice performance throughout this, which I wasn’t really expecting from him. How was it working with him and seeing that full range? Because it’d be so easy to just have Petey be so evil and over the top, but he does come around.It’s interesting. The thing about Pete is that he has an edge to him, but he’s actually a very sweet guy. I would see that in stuff like his Bupkis show, that it would go into kind of a sweet place. So I knew he was capable of doing that. So Petey does start out all yelling. It’s just a lot of yelling. The movie has a lot of yelling at it. They’re just energized characters. Then that character has really the biggest arc in the whole story. What I find a lot of times with actors and they’re like, “Okay, this is a goof,” and then they get to something that has some real emotional pull to it, and they’re so much more interested in it. It really comes to life for them. So, the turns that he has and the sweetness that he ends up showing in the movie, he was all in on that and loved it, and he was like, “I wanna do it again. Lemme do it again. Lemme do it again.” Some of these lines, we would just really kind of caress them. But he enjoyed doing that a lot, and he really did a great job with it.I spotted the two kids from Captain Underpants in the background of a scene or two. I read there are a bunch of small appearances for them. What was your way of adding in the Easter eggs and making sure it was like a fun little bonus to spot them rather than just being constantly in the film?Yeah. That’s George and Harold. There’s the one kind of obvious one where they’re sitting on a park bench, but they do appear multiple other times. I think we just kind of gave permission to the art team — Nate Wragg is the production designer, and Chris Zibach, who is the art director — to just put stuff anywhere, signs, all this kind of stuff. There’s tons of stuff on all the newspapers. A lot of that, sometimes it comes from a storyboard artist, sometimes a lot of those where Chris Zibach put those things in ’cause he designed that stuff. It was more like a group effort that the door is open, let’s load it up. I’ve seen the movie a hundred times. The last time I saw it, I saw two things that I’d never seen before. it’s just packed.That’s what makes the home release so great. You can definitely get those rewatches in, and find those little details.I’m totally looking forward to people freeze-framing and finding stuff because there’s a ton of it.Right before I saw Dog Man, and this wasn’t planned, but I had watched The Country Bears. I didn’t realize you had done that as well until today. Elton John has such a funny cameo in that film. How was it working with him?Elton was great. I came up, I went to music school and I have a whole music background. When I did that movie, I probably knew more about music than I did about filmmaking.We brought all of these people. Queen Latifah shows up, and Brian Setzer, obviously Christopher Walken is not a musician, but he sounds like one.Elton John was great. It was one day. Here’s a funny thing that happened, though. We’re shooting in a driveway of a mansion in Beverly Hills, and we have all of these animatronic bears on the street, and I’m standing there with Elton John, and then a tour bus comes by that’s usually like, “Oh, there’s the Beverly Hills mansion,” stuff like that. But the tour bus comes by, and there’s four giant animatronic bears standing in the street talking to Elton John when he came by. He just waved. He was great. It was super fun. That’s crazy that you would watch those two movies together.Thanks to Dog Man director Peter Hastings for taking the time to talk about the new DreamWorks movie.The post Interview: Dog Man Director Talks George & Harold Cameos, Pete Davidson’s Range appeared first on ComingSoon.net - Movie Trailers, TV & Streaming News, and More.