Introduction

Hellboy: Sword of Storms DVD

With the recent release of "Hellboy: Sword of Storms" on DVD and the impending arrival of "Hellboy: Blood and Iron", director Tad Stones has been very busy of late. A 30 year veteran of the animation industry, Tad spent his early years at Disney before branching out on his own, and he's been trying to bring his vision of Hellboy into animated form for some time. We were able to get some time with Tad to ask about his early days at Disney, a CGI "Hellboy", and what the future holds.

TwitchGuru: Thanks for taking time to talk with us today, Tad. First off, how did you get your start as a director?

Tad Stones: I guess you could say it would be back at Disney. When I moved into TV animation I was originally a creative executive helping propose and develop shows. My first actual series was the third season of the "Gummi Bears". I was credited as co-producer, although they didn't tell me that until the end of the series. I always told them, "I wish I'd known I would have given different notes." I did give notes at that stage even though I wasn't the director. I worked very closely with my partner Alan Zazlove who was the director and gave director-like notes to keep the stories moving. I didn't take a credit as director until the direct to video movies like "Aladdin 2: Return of Jafar". That was my first credited director job.

TwitchGuru: "Return of Jafar" was one of the first Disney sequels to a big theatrical release, and it was the first one to go straight to video.

Tad: It was, so yes, that's my sin. Originally we were doing shows for syndication, and we would do a five-part story on "Darkwing Duck" or "Duck Tales", and it would be shown as a movie. We were doing that as an "Aladdin" movie, because that's how we introduced our series. I called up home video and said, "By definition I'm doing the sequel to 'Aladdin'. Are you interested?", and at that time they weren't. It wasn't until they released "Aladdin" on video and it made a huge amount of money that they changed their tune. At one point we were told not to worry about the money, but we worried about it anyway to get it done in time. Frankly the only reason we pitched it was to keep our budgets up. We just felt, perhaps foolishly, if there was another source pulling in some money they would keep our production budgets up. We had no clue it would go on to make over $100 million domestic.

TwitchGuru: Was there any concern about Robin Williams not coming back for the genie or was that not even on the table since you were working on it for television?

Tad: It was never even on the table. For the TV show we were working with Dan Castellaneta (otherwise known as Homer Simpson), and he's so brilliant and a such a great improviser. For "Aladdin and the King of Thieves" we did have Robin Williams back so that was an interesting situation. Actually that was kind of fun in that he came in after we had already been in production so he actually got to see some finished animation or storyboards, and he was riffing on what he saw. We were able to change things because we were told to include him.

TwitchGuru: I read that you pitched "Hellboy" as a primetime series to Disney in 1996. Is that true?

Tad: Yeah, maybe a little earlier. I did a little visual sizzle reel using Mike's [Mignola] comics, and I only had Seed of Destruction, Wake the Devil, and The Corpse which were the first two major story arcs that were out at that time. The general concept was here's a guy who looks like a devil but who's a good guy. I let the images speak for themselves since he's battling weird frog guys and a strange tentacled monster, he's pulled through the floor, and there's this giant pig-headed guy beating him up. I just took all the images from the comics and set it to Carmina Burana which people recognize as "The Omen" music. They were just looking to do different things in primetime animation. I think at that time they were really looking for a "Simpsons" just like everybody today looks for "Spongebob Squarepants".

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