Rise of the Guardians Director Would Love to Return for Sequel

Long before he won an Oscar for his work on Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Peter Ramsey worked on a little project called Rise of the Guardians for DreamWorks animation; in fact, the flick was Ramsey’s first shot at directing a feature-length film. Despite featuring an ensemble cast with the likes of Chris Pine, Jude Law, Alec Baldwin, Hugh Jackman, and Isla Fisher, the movie flopped at the box office. It ended up grossing at least double its production budget — a traditional Hollywood break-even point — but still ended up causing the studio an $83 million loss as a result of the film’s extensive marketing campaign.

Suffice to say, DreamWorks and Paramount haven’t been super anxious to get a follow-up in the works. If the stars align, however, Ramsey says he’d return to the property at once.

“I’d love to be involved in something like that again, just because there are so many things I’d like to improve on from the first time because of inexperience or the circumstances that we didn’t get to do,” Ramsey told ComicBook.com in a recent interview. “I would love to. I’d love to work with some of those same people again, to have another bite of the apple and those characters. I think they deserve another shot. I really love them.”

The filmmaker added, “When you work on something for three years, you develop a relationship with these little imaginary characters. So, they’re your family. I would love to do right by them.”

We’d spoken to the director in support of a new web-series where he’s featured. Faceplant is a docuseries a part of Million Stories, a site aiming to teach America’s youth about financial literacy. In his episode, Ramsey revealed his time on Rise of the Guardians is probably his biggest professional hiccup to date, just because of the poor commercial response.

“It truly did teach me that you can put everything into your work, you can put your heart and soul into it, but in the end, it is not you, and you’re not just a person who works or does one particular thing,” Ramsey added. “You’re beyond that, and that’s the thing that matters. And that lesson, I think, kind of sustained me. It’s your family, it’s your whole history. There’s just more to you than one thing that you do. So I think that understanding really helped me kind of like weather that storm and come out the other side.”

Rise of the Guardians is now streaming on HBO Max. Ramsey’s episode of Faceplant can be seen for free on MillionStories.com.

What other animated franchises would you like to see return?