This week’s The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild is the franchise’s sixth film installment. The film is a testament to the franchise’s lasting success which has now expanded to several mediums such as video games and television. Murphy’s Multiverse got to attend the press junket for the film which included director John C. Donkin and longtime producer Lori Forte.
Lori Forte explained why the team behind the franchise decided to give Buck Wild of all characters the spotlight for this film.
Buck is such a lovable character. We just adored him in the first movie and in Dawn of the Dinosaurs. And we always knew [Simon Pegg] wanted to do something more and so we did. We found another way of bringing him back in Collision Course. But it just felt like he deserved his own movie. He deserves his own spinoff because the character himself, he’s just so iconic. He’s clever, he’s an adventurer, he’s a swashbuckler, he’s a protector and guardian of the lost world. It’s such a great, great character to have. We love to go on adventures with him because he’s just not afraid of anything.
For director John C. Donkin, it made sense to make a new film about the evergreen theme of family.
One of the great themes of this film is the family angle. And we loved the idea of once you’re in a herd, which is our family, it’s a herd. They’re equivalent. Once you’re in a herd and you have that connection, it’s okay if there’s some physical separation between you, because there’s always going to be shared love and support.
The notion was enforced further by Forte, who said the coinciding pandemic helped bolster the film’s very timely themes.
I think we started with the story way before COVID obviously happened. So it’s just a universal message for all time. And because COVID happened, it seems strikingly apparent now, that the message about family and staying together, even if you’re not together, and being together, whether you’re not together. I think that all works, but I think it’s a universal theme for any time.
