Netflix’s Oscar-Contending In Your Dreams Has A Jaw-Dropping Origin Story

After adding the Academy Award, the best animation feature in 2001 has long been assumed that the winner will come from one of the industry power plants: Disney, Pixar or DreamWorks Animation. Most of the history of the class was considered true. However, for the last three years Oscar has gone elsewhere. Netflix clicked on the statue in 2022 “Guillermo del Toron Pinocchio”, Studio Ghibli won the main prize in 2023 “The Boy and the Heron” and last year’s awards ceremony Made of animation history When independently released “flow” hits away The highest movie of the year. These winnings mean a quiet but significant change in the recognition of the Academy of animation: despite Natural problems presented by the Academy’s perspective to an animated movieArtistic, innovation and emotional depth are no longer limited to large studios.

Netflix, in particular, has become a serious challenger in this developing landscape. To this day, the streaming giant has earned seven candidates for the best animated feature class, one win (and undoubtedly an extra win for “Mitchells vs. the Machines”, whose “Encanton” virus has been overshadowed). Now all eyes are in their next animated feature, “In Your Dreams”, which already seems to be confident on the path towards the name number eight.

The film follows Stevie (pronounced Jolie Hoang-RappaPort) and her younger brother Elliot (Elias Janssen) as they swept their dream taste to trace a difficult Sandman who promises to fulfill their dream-if they find him. They have to navigate surrealistic landscapes that are conjured up of imaginations and nightmares, and Elliot’s beloved, intelligent giraffe, Baloney Tony (Craig Robinson), which acts as an unlikely companion. The first teaser trailer for the premiere of this year was scheduled for this year’s Annecy International Animation Film Festival, but I had the opportunity to preview extended scenes at a private Netflix event. Director Alex Woo, who made his feature debut, honestly talked about the largest of the game in the game’s largest animation houses to direct his first film to his Kuku Studios banner.

Before Alex Woo founded Kuku Studios, he earned the Student Academy Prize (very awesome “Rex Steele: Nazi Sasher”), he worked as a story director at Pixar Animation Studio and worked as Director of Development at Lucasfilm Animation. In Pixar, he once worked for “Ratatou”, “Wall-E”, “Dear Dinosaurus” and “Finding Dory”, with a former pair who goes back to the Osal of the best animated features in Oscar. Since the establishment of Kuku studios, he has created and implemented director Netflix pre -school series “Go! Go! Cory Carson”, but has worked on a big screen for your “dreams” for about a decade.

“At that time, we were a small three team that imagined the stories we wanted to see in the world,” Woo said. “One of our first ideas was a movie about dreams […] The film takes us through, full of great visions and cheerful, outside the world, but in the heart it is grounded, an emotional story of two siblings that find their way through the world that is not always sensible. “The story is personal to Woo, who explained that the dynamic Stevie and Elliot of his sibling is based on his own relationship. I was six years old on a cold Minnesota morning, I woke up to find my mother in the front door of his bags,” he explained.

“He told me and my brother carefully that he needed a while to find out things to our family. I didn’t fully understand what it meant – but I knew,

It has been so deeply stuck in his own life that Woo said his friend was a friend and his reaction was, “You know, this movie is just a truly circling way to tell your brother that you love her,” and Woo replied, “Making movies is easier than dealing with emotions.” By dealing with the existential theme “In Your Dreams” provides space for young audiences to deal with more challenging topics, something that has become very difficult to come.

Like many of us, Woo grew up in the movies that told us that if we wanted hard enough and if we want something bad, our dreams come true. But then we grow and understand that sometimes it is accurate … But sometimes it is not. When there is difficult reality at a distance, it is difficult not to get into nihilism. As Woo thought, “I really wanted to make a movie that examines the question what you do when your dreams really don’t come true? How do you find hope? How do you continue moving in life? How do you find through the road?”

Woo explained that the dream films in animated mode have been the white whales of every studio and except something “Inside Out” “Spin-Off” Dream Production “(which works like a job comedy that only occur To be in Dreamland’s film studio version) no one has found a way to make a dream movie. As Woo and his team broke the idea, they jumped to do it to make sure they were able to hit their competitors. But the real motivating factor was the story itself. “I made this movie by believing that the best way through the heart is open – that sometimes we have to get rid of what our dream life should be and keep living as it really is,” Woo said. “I hope it inspires you and your family not only to dream big, but also find joy in all the moments of life, because even if it is messy, it’s beautiful.”

The starting point is charming, but the visual ambition and narrative heart lift it outside the acquaintances. The material and the bully I saw revealed a movie with a wealth of layered world construction, an emotionally grounded character, and a visual style that mixes with the concrete warmth of the dreamy abstract. If “In Your Dreams” makes its promise of its early material, it may be more than just Netflix’s next prize competitor – it may be a sign that the family movie landscape will eventually expand once again both in scope and in the spirit.

“In Your Dreams” is scheduled to release November 14, 2025, with Craig Robinson, Simu Liu, Cristin Milioti, Omid Djalili, Gia Carides, Sungwon Cho and Zachary Noah Piser sound.