Inspector Sun and the Curse of the Black Widow turns classic film noir themes into a fantastic animated murder mystery with anthropomorphized insects. Ronny Chieng voices a celebrity arachnid policeman who’s more lucky than skilled, and despised by his law enforcement colleagues in 1934 Shanghai. A humiliated Inspector Sun takes an impromptu trip to San Francisco with his biggest fan, Janey (Emily Kleimo), a young jumping spider, tagging along. The pair must find a killer while contending with bug gangsters, a villainous locust, and angry ants while under the feet of human passengers on a seaplane.

Spanish director Julio Soto Gúrpide discusses adapting the film from Rocco Pucillo’s script, which won the 2013 Samuel Goldwyn Writing Award. This was “the first time for an animated movie.” The “regulations” were changed because of “how much they liked it.” Gúrpide “convinced” Pucillo to make the movie after Tim Burton “dropped the project.” The original story was “a lot darker” with “guns, shootings, and insects killed.” They had to rewrite the script “so that it became a more family friendly mystery.”

Inspector Sun and the Curse of the Black Widow does a great job of varying perspectives from the diminutive critters to humans. This was extremely difficult to achieve. Gú​​​rpide​​​​ comments that “you need to have enough information with a lot of details” because “this is a visual code not normally done in movies.” His goal was to make “appealing” and “unique” characters that weren’t “gross in a creepy crawly way.” He also dealt with “COVID restrictions” that were “very big at that time.” Gúrpide​​​​ lived “in New York for more than 10 years.” He was overjoyed to get US distribution through Viva Pictures. Please see below our complete interview with Julio Soto Gúrpide.

Visually Arresting Characters
Viva Pictures

Movieweb: This is a wildly creative animated film. You’ve got bugs and gangsters in a classic film noir murder mystery. Talk about developing Rocco Pucillo’s award-winning script into a feature.

Julio Soto Gúrpide: We met Rocco Pucillo five or six years ago. The script had won the Samuel Goldwyn Writing Award, which was the first time for an animated movie. They gave it to an animated movie, which was not normally the useful thing to do. They sort of changed the regulations. That’s how much they liked it. Tim Burton had it for a while. He had the option to make a movie. But he dropped the project, and then we were lucky enough to convince Rocco to make this movie with the script. That was the beginning of how the movie started.

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MW: Inspector Sun and the Curse of the Black Widow is very sophisticated. It’s not a brainless kid’s film. There are serious characters, fear, and anxiety along with the humor. You’re making a family children’s film. Was there ever a point where you thought it might be too dark or too complex?

Julio Soto Gúrpide: Yes, the original story was actually a lot darker. Trust me, like a lot darker, there were a lot of guns, shootings, and insects killed. When you think about it, we kill flies and stuff every day, nobody cares about it. But when you see your main characters are insects and being killed, then you feel bad about them. So we wanted to avoid any darkness in the movie. We started rewriting the script so that it became a more family friendly mystery. Okay, there is one murder, but it’s not that visually arresting or anything like that. It’s just something that happens because we need that for our story.

Julio Soto Gúrpide: The rest of the work was how to make this world, which was very unique. We had to design really appealing characters. I wouldn’t say cute spiders, but some of them are like Janie, very cute, very appealing characters. People would look at and say, I’ve never seen like that. It looks different and original. If we get people to think that this is a fascinating world, we’re halfway there.

A Fascinating World
Viva Pictures

MW: There are two parts to the animation that I thought that you knocked out of the park. First the actual bugs, their appendages and your limbs. Talk about transposing insects to the screen. There is also a difference between the miniscule insect world and giant human world. The entire film is on a plane. There’s a change in perspective from people to the insects below their feet.

Julio Soto Gúrpide: Going back a bit to the same topic of not making it too dark, or gross in a creepy way. We had to make the animation so that the spiders and the other insect wouldn’t crawl like insects. We had to make them a little more anthropomorphic. The way they move. There were a lot of references. We really enjoyed watching Hotel Transylvania and the way they posed the characters. It’s very appealing, even when they are vampires or other monsters. We knew that was the key was to make them appealing again. We knew we couldn’t make them creepy crawly insects.

Related: 13 Creepiest, Crawliest Movies About Bugs

MW: And regarding the scale of the characters?

Julio Soto Gúrpide: There is something that the computers don’t like, which is when you mix scales of big characters and really tiny ones. You need to have enough information, a lot of details. So that when you see a big character and a tiny one, they both feel like they have enough details and information. That was very complicated because if you make it human, that is huge, like a mountain, and you get really close to the shoe or the pants. You still need to be able to see the dirt on the shoes or the lace on the shoes.

Julio Soto Gúrpide: The other challenging thing was the point of view. Insects and flies are usually close to the ground or to the walls. So this is a code. This is a visual code that is not normally done in movies. I can think about it from the 50s. I don’t know the name. It was Incredible Shrinking Man or something like that, which was about a guy who became really, really tiny, and it had this point of view of different scales. It was very challenging, but also very, very interesting to do.

MW: You have two vocal performances. The film was originally released in Spain. Where there any changes or difficulties producing the English version?

Julio Soto Gúrpide: All the movies that we make on our production site are international. We always make them in mind the English-speaking world, which is our main target in a way. It was originally made in English. So the lip sync and everything was actually done with reference voices in English. The lucky thing was that we got Ronny Chieng very early in the movie. We got to record him doing all the dialogue. And then when we animated. That was pretty amazing because the characters they could hear the acting of Ronnie. That inspired them a lot. We watched his face in different movies to see his facial expressions. We worked in English, basically, the whole movie,

MW: What was the best and worst day for you as director of Inspector Sun and The Curse of the Black Widow?

Julio Soto Gúrpide: The worst part was making the colony dance. The ant colony was amazingly technically complicated. We spent literally from day one covidtill the last day of the production trying to figure out some of the parts. We had some of the errors and it was very tricky. At some point, I felt despair. I felt we were never going to pull it off. But eventually we did. And it was very satisfying now to see the images of the end and the colony building towers. The happiest day, well, obviously, when I finally finished filming. We had to deal with COVID restrictions. We had to deal with lots of issues, just like any production, but COVID was very big at that time. Also, one of the best things was when Viva grabbed the project, and they told me that they were going to release it in the US. The US is very close to my heart. I lived in New York for more than 10 years. For me, going back to the US releasing movies is amazing.

Inspector Sun and the Curse of the Black Widow will be released theatrically on October 27th from Viva Pictures.