Now streaming on Netflix, Dreamworks Animation’s Orion and the Dark has big ideas and a huge new world for movie fans to discover. Based on the book by Emma Yarlett and written by Academy Award winner Charlie Kaufman (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), the film follows Orion, a young boy with a major case of anxiety and fear of all things, especially the dark. The fears he has are just the first step into a big new arena of characters, one that could very clearly keep going.
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Speaking with ComicBook.com in an exclusive interview, we asked Orion and the Dark director Sean Charmatz and producer Peter McCown if they’d had conversations about the future of Orion and the Dark, and there is hope in the air. “Not yet, but listen up Netflix. We got ideas,” McCown revealed. Charmatz added, “We’re ready to make another. I, I know I would love to make another film where (Charlie Kaufman) is involved and wrote the script, but we’ll see what happens, we’ll see what happens after people see this film, you know.”
The cast for Orion and the Dark includes Jacob Tremblay (Good Boys, Room) as Orion (with Colin Hanks as Adult Orion), plus Paul Walter Hauser (Richard Jewell, I, Tonya) as Dark, Angela Bassett (Malcolm X, Black Panther) as Sweet Dreams, Ike Barinholtz (Blockers, The Mindy Project) as Light, Natasia Demetriou (What We Do in the Shadows, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem) as Sleep, Golda Rosheuvel (Bridgerton, Queen Charlotte) as Unexplained Noises, Nat Faxon (Disenchantment, Bad Teacher) as Insomnia, Aparna Nancherla (BoJack Horseman, Corporate) as Quiet, Carla Gugino (Spy Kids, Sin City) as Orion’s Mom, Matt Dellapina (For Life, Bull) as Orion’s Dad, Jack Fisher (You, NCIS) as Richi Panichi, and Werner Herzog (Jack Reacher, Cave of Forgotten Dreams) as The Narrator
Orion and the Dark as follows: Orion seems a lot like your average elementary school kid – shy, unassuming, harboring a secret crush. But underneath his seemingly normal exterior, Orion is a ball of adolescent anxiety, completely consumed by irrational fears of bees, dogs, the ocean, cell phone waves, murderous gutter clowns, and even falling off of a cliff. But of all his fears, the thing he’s the most afraid of is what he confronts on a nightly basis: the dark. So when the literal embodiment of his worst fear pays a visit, Dark whisks Orion away on a roller coaster ride around the world to prove there is nothing to be afraid of in the night. As the unlikely pair grows closer, Orion must decide if he can learn to accept the unknown – to stop letting fear control his life and finally embrace the joy of living.”
Orion and the Dark is now streaming on Netflix.
