THE WINGFEATHER SAGA’s Showrunner Says Stories Can ‘Change the World’
By Movieguide® Contributor
Chris Wall, the creator of the hit animated series THE WINGFEATHER SAGA, credits an early love of storytelling to his parents.
“I grew up in a family that loved to read, so regularly in the evenings, my dad would come home and read to us,” Chris Wall said on the “Jesus Calling” podcast.
One of his fondest childhood memories was reading through The Little House on the Prairie. Even later in his teens, the oldest of seven kids still would join in on family story time.
“I remember even coming home when I was like sixteen, seventeen, and Dad would be reading to the kids and I’d hop in and sit down and have a listen,” he recalled. “And so stories, early on, really shaped me.”
He got a taste of visual storytelling when his dad got him a camcorder and he learned how to film and edit.
It was after watching RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK and THE LITTLE MERMAID that he started “falling in love with the visual medium”
“We had a VHS cassette of [THE LITTLE MERMAID], and I was just so taken with this combination because I had not experienced this kind of Broadway musical. And that was my first taste of that kind of thing, and it just sold me,” Chris remembered.
The Texas native went on to major in film and television at Oral Roberts University where he got the opportunity to work on editing a series of adaptations of Max Lucado’s short stories. One of those was Lucado’s children’s book You Are Special, where Wall got to voice the main character as well. That project opened the door to work on VEGGIETALES.
“‘The Search for Samson’s Hairbrush’ was my first VEGGIETALES production to edit. I then helped produce all the kind of behind the scenes and DVD features and cool interactive stuff,” the father-of-six said. “And then just a couple years into that, I got moved into the head of the studio, which was a crazy opportunity.”
During his 11 years with Big Idea Entertainment, the studio behind the hit animated series, he produced 16 movies where he learned more about the production process.
Then after the “amazing” season with VEGGIETALES, he and wife Heather were left to “face the unknown.” So the couple sought the Lord as they stepped into their next season.
“Will there be another creative idea ever? Will I ever get to be involved in something like this ever again? It’s all the same, right?” Wall said. “And just kind of sitting back and saying, ‘All right, God, you have led this journey. What’s next?’”
An adaptation of the Andrew Peterson’s four-part series children novels, The Wingfeather Saga came to mind as a potential project. Wall and Peterson partnered together to start Shining Isle Productions and started producing the series.
Wall says that the fantasy story that follows Igiby siblings — Janner, “Tink” and Leeli — along with mom Nia and grandfather Podo and their adventures in the land of Aerwiar is more than just an entertaining kid’s series.
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“I think that The Wingfeather Saga is one of those once-in-a-lifetime stories. It was The Chronicles of Narnia that just kind of captured imaginations,” Wall said. “And I think The Wingfeather Saga has done that very similarly for a lot of families, like, Oh, it’s a little fantasy story. This is fun. Whoa. That was a really deep truth. Well, that was another really deep truth. And it kind of surprises you, right?”
“It’s not just whimsical or charming or funny or clever, it’s meaningful, and deeply meaningful in ways that are authentic,” he added.
It is the deeper meaning in stories that excites the 50-year-old creator most about the storytelling process.
“C.S. Lewis talks about this a lot, that stories and music can do something to us where it awakens this sense of something else, something deeper, something further, something that we can’t quite get at — those eternal things,” he said. “That restlessness, when we encounter that, can lead to all kinds of discovery, can lead to all kinds of awakening. The Holy Spirit can do work in those moments. And that is the kind of story that I get excited about.”
“I think when we’re patient to listen to His leading, it can go to places that are really beautiful and change the world. I believe stories can really do that,” Wall said.
The response to the Angel Studios series has been “resounding,” Wall said, and has already had 10,000 investors and raised over $12 million, with the third season in the works.
According to Angel Studios season three will be based on the second book of the series North! Or Be Eaten and continues with the “hijinks and quirks of the Igiby siblings” as they face adventures that “challenge them even more.”
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