SALT LAKE CITY (See It or Skip It) A new animated family series, Curses, arrives on Apple TV+ today, centered around siblings trying to break a curse that turned their father to stone. Film critic Patrick Beatty had the chance to speak with the director Jeff Dixon as well as Executive Producer Jim Cooper about this new story, the do’s and don’t of kids’ storytelling, and the unique story surrounding Curses.
Q: What approach did you take with Curses, did the animation come first or the story?
We were just a couple of dads that met at our kid’s elementary school. We would drop the kids off at school and talk about writing on the way back. Jeff is mostly in the horror world and I’m mostly in family and animation and we always thought “wouldn’t it be great to combine the two”
Jim Cooper
Q: Who had the story concept first and where did the idea come from?
Cooper was talking about his-what we joked about “family curse”. because all the men from one side of his family all died relatively young. we have a little gallows humor where we found some humor in it and we decided oh, what if they were actually cursed. Once we found a picture of his father holding a human skullat 3-years-old we were like “Okay, maybe that’s the artifact that created the curse.” It was one of those things that kinda just spitballed from there.
Jeff Dixon
What are the “do’s and don’ts” of writing an adventure story for kids?
There were actually a couple of things that we found important. First thing was we always said we never wanted to talk down to kids. Kids can tell when they’re being talked down to and they’re a lot smarter than people give them credit for so we knew the could accept complex stories that maybe went sometimes over the course of a season and they can handle some potential social issues that most peoplethink they might not be able to- and can handle scares.
Jeff Dixon
You can watch the full interview above or on the See It or Skip It YouTube channel. Make sure to check out the entire season of Curses now on Apple TV+
