It’s been 20 years since Deborah Diesen’s story about a pouty, anti-social fish who learns to emotionally connect hit bookshelves, soon becoming a reader favorite. Since then, it’s sold more than 10 million copies… and Diesen’s published 20 Pout-Pout Fish stories. Now, her first book, The Pout-Pout Fish, is getting an animated feature film adaptation. 

VIVA Kids Films’ The Pout-Pout Fish follows an unlikely undersea duo: Mr. Fish, a prickly recluse, and Pip, a hyperactive sea dragon. When catastrophe threatens their homes, the two set off on a daunting ocean-wide quest to find a mythical fish said to grant wishes. What begins as an impossible mission into the great unknown becomes a heartfelt journey filled with dazzling wonders, unexpected dangers, eccentric characters, and emotional self-discovery.

Check out the trailer:

The film tells a new Pout-Pout Fish story directed by Ricard Cussó with co-director Rio Harrington. Cyma Zarghami and Madeira Ginley produce for MIMO Studios, alongside Like a Photon Creative’s Kristen Souvlis and Nadine Bates. The film is written by Elise Allen, Elie Choufany, and Dominic Morris. Cosmic Dino Studios handles the animation. 

Produced in association with Macmillan Publishers and produced with the assistance of The Post Lounge Pty Ltd, the movie features a star-studded voice cast including Nick Offerman (Mr. Fish) and Nina Oyama (Pip), as well as Miranda Otto and Remy Hii, with Jordin Sparks and Amy Sedaris, 

AWN got the chance to talk with director Cussó and writer Allen about the challenges and joys of adapting this book into a mesmerizing, animated undersea adventure. 

Victoria Davis: The book has been out since 2008. How did this adaptation start? Why now? 

Elise Allen: Like a Photon and MIMO reached out to me. This is the first book they’ve optioned, and they believed it would make a terrific movie. They were really excited about it and, after they reached out to me, I read it for the first time. It’s such a fantastic book and I totally fell in love with it. But, of course, we needed to expand the world in order to fit a movie. That’s when I pitched my take on it and the studios liked it. From there, we started diving in and ideating and playing and letting it grow to what it became.

VD: We haven’t seen many fully CG-animated underwater features like this since Finding Nemo and Shark Tale. What were main challenges you anticipated right off the bat when it came to adapting this book into a film, especially the underwater setting? And how did you guys end up overcoming those obstacles?

Ricard Cussó: I had worked with Like a Photon previously, but I've never done underwater films. So, I thought it was a great opportunity to flex some muscles and try to find new creative ways to tell a story underwater. But there were definitely challenges. We’re a very small studio in Australia. We're not Pixar. We're not DreamWorks. We have our limitations, especially with a bar as technologically high as an underwater film. We had to figure out how to do this in a smart way. 

One of the first principles we took from was the SpongeBob approach. The way things would normally move under the water, we threw that out of the window. We’re going to tell a fun and funny story that just so happens to take place under the water. And if something needs to fall or drop because of gravity and comedy, then we do that even if that’s not normally something that would happen underwater. We didn’t worry about buoyancy or bubbles or trying to convince people of the realism of this underwater world. 

But we also didn’t want the frames and sequences to feel dead, especially since it’s a CG film. So, kelp became our biggest friend and our biggest enemy. We wanted to have the water flow moving something in the background to keep the world feeling alive, but it was a technical challenge because, in almost every frame, there's this kelp moving in the background and creating the mechanics of it that we could reuse was really a struggle for the artists. But our amazing team pulled it off. 

VD: Did this approach to the visuals affect the way you adapted the narrative? How did you come up with the final story for the film? 

EA: It’s a picture book, so the story is simpler than a feature film. But when you get to the core of it, the story is about a pout-pout fish, with a pout-pout face, who spreads the dreary-wearies all over the place until he starts to make connections that bring him out of his shell. Then he learns that he can be more than a pout-pout fish. That’s the heart. That’s the emotional core. But we expanded the story to explore why he’s a pouty fish in the first place, which is background we don’t get in the book. 

Mr. Fish is happy to be in his own world until somebody, Pip, who is the polar opposite of Mr. Fish and is this barrel full of energy, pops up in his life. Then, Mr. Fish has to figure out how to function with Pip when circumstances push them into going on a journey together. So, along with the background, we tried to figure out the most dramatic way to bring in characters who would turn this pouty fish into a connected fish. 

VD: We often see these stories of characters with opposite personalities connecting and bringing out the best in each other. We see it in Finding Nemo even. Why do you think this is such a winning story formula to explore?

EA: If you want to talk to people about making connections, the best way to do it is to tell a story of connections with people who seem like they would never in a million years connect. It seems like they couldn't possibly have anything in common but forcing them together is the most dramatic way to find something they never knew was there. They're going to bring things out in each other that they never would have expected. This kind of story is ripe for that. 

RC: That dynamic naturally lends itself to good storytelling. And, ultimately, the film is a quest film, too. You're following the characters from location to location to the end goal, which is fun as it is. But as soon as you add that second element of this juxtaposition of these two very different characters who are going through the same struggles but view the world in very different ways, that makes it even more engaging. 

I have a two-year-old daughter who was born at the time I was directing this film. So, it really changed the lens on how I see things, especially through her eyes. So that idea of Mr. Fish being this reclusive person and the key to unlocking him is through communities, through other fish, that message really stuck with me. And I hope, when my daughter watches it, she picks up on those cues that hopefully will help her flourish as a person.

VD: You mentioned the narrative themes you want viewers to hone in on, but there’s also a lot of color pop in this film and I’m curious what visuals you’re most excited about people seeing? 

RC: It’s a bit of a spoiler, but the main antagonist of the film is a cuttlefish, which lives in the bottom of this abyss. And there is a big climatic battle in the film, and we wanted it to be something that visually we haven't seen before. I was doing research about cuttlefish and found out, when they want to attack prey, they have this incredible pattern where their skin turns into this almost alien-like pattern, and it kind of looks like a Rorschach mask. They use that to hypnotize their prey. 

I was completely captivated and was like, “We need to have that in the film.” That was a whole other technical issue, trying to capture those crazy patterns for this incredible army of hypnotizing cuttlefish. But everyone agreed we needed to make it happen. 

VD: As you said before, your team is smaller than those at Disney and Pixar, but you still chose to take these big leaps visually. I think you stuck the landing, but how do you handle that kind of gamble as a smaller studio knowing you have less room and budget to play with? 

RC: We are a smaller studio, so we didn’t have the luxury of making many mistakes. The kudos goes to the entire team of people who put so much love and effort into every single thing they were asked to do on this movie. Their effort is in every frame. And I'm just very proud of the team and being a very collaborative studio. 

We’ve also had the same crew for the last four years and we’ve gotten to know everyone’s strengths. So, the trust was built naturally, and it was just clockwork. This was one of the best productions I’ve been a part of and it’s the first film that my daughter has watched at the movies the whole way through. So, it's definitely a very special film and shows what we can do as a studio. We’re very proud and we’re excited for everyone to see it.