How Showrunner Luke Matheny and His Team Spun Their New Animated Take on ‘Charlotte’s Web’ (New Trailer)

“A spider’s life can’t help being something of a mess with all the trapping and eating flies. By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone’s life can stand a little of that.”

— Charlotte in Charlotte’s Web

E.B. White’s classic novel Charlotte’s Web has taught generations of young readers about the gift of friendship and the inevitability of loss since it was first published in 1952. The tale of Wilbur the pig and his generous spider friend has been adapted into a memorable 1973 animated musical (featuring Debbie Reynolds as Charlotte) and a 2006 live-action feature (with Julia Roberts as the titular spider).

This week, families will be able to enjoy a brand-new three-part CG-animated take on the tale featuring Amy Adams (Charlotte), Elijah Wood (Wilbur), Jean Smart (narrator), Cynthia Erivo (Goose), Randall Park (Templeton) and Rosario Dawson (Edith). The show’s beautiful CG animation is produced by Toronto’s Guru Studio (PAW Patrol, Mecha Builders). We had the chance to chat with Emmy-winning showrunner/executive producer Luke Matheny, (Ghostwriter, Gortimer Gibbons’ Life on Normal Street) about this sparkling new adaptation of the classic. Here is what he told us:

Animation Magazine: Luke, congratulations on this great new adaptation of Charlotte’s Web, which premieres this week on HBO Max. Can you tell us how this whole production came about?

Luke Matheny: I was working on the Apple TV+ show Ghostwriter in Toronto, and one of the episodes involved Charlotte’s Web, and there had been conversations with the estate and our producer Sesame Workshop really impressed the estate, and they offered them the chance to adapt the books as a miniseries. That’s when I was asked to come on board.

At the time, my daughter was only six months old and I couldn’t wait to get back home to L.A. for a long time where I could do a job from home, and now she’s in kindergarten. Now when the show comes out, we’re going to have a pizza party and the kids are going to stay up late. We’re going to let the children go to school a little late the next day!

Was this the first time you were working in animation?

I had worked in animation a little bit on a children’s series called Gortimer Gibbons’ Life on Normal Street, and I also wrote an adaptation of Oliver Jeffers’ [book] called Here We Are that became a special for Apple. I’ll just say that was far and away the biggest animated project that I worked on.

What do you love about Charlotte’s Web and this project?

Well for me, and I think for a lot of people, what struck me the hardest was how surprising and emotional the ending was. It was probably my first memory of incredibly emotional artistic experience. When I was watching an episode of He-Man, I was not expecting the same kind of emotional tidal wave. Even though it might have felt unpleasant for a little bit at the time to have those feelings, you could tell that it was important.

Which isn’t to say it’s a a top-to-bottom sad story by any stretch. There’s so many fun, sweet things as well. I always thought Templeton was hilarious, and there’s something about Wilbur that has such a sweet feel. Everyone is just looking out for him all the time. But, there’s no question that I wouldn’t have remembered any of that had it not been for this really emotional ending which was a radical choice for E.B. White. You’re spending the whole book wondering if this pig is going to make it or not, and then, the spider dies! It’s just very shocking even though it all sort of makes sense in in the world of the book it all makes perfect sense.

Was the project always conceived as three 45-minute parts?

There was a brief time when it was going to be six 22-minute parts, but that quickly turned into a three-parter, which we knew was going to be a little longer than the material in the book. That meant we were going to add a few more things, especially in the human characters. But the goal we set for ourselves was that anything that we make up we want people to think that it was actually in the book. That was a little tricky, like the fire in Zuckerman’s barn — Oh yeah! Who could forget that! — But we actually made that up. We wanted it to feel like it was in the book!

Let’s talk about the animation created by Guru Studio. Many recall the 1973 Hanna-Barbera musical version (with songs by the Sherman Brothers) directed by Charles A. Nichols and Iwao Takamoto (with Debbie Reynolds and Paul Lynde) and the 2006 live-action version with Julia Roberts as the voice of Charlotte (directed by Gary Winick).

Sure, well, I come from a live-action background, so that was what I was bringing into the conversations with Guru and our director Yurie Rocha. They were very game because I think they’re used to just getting other animation references, while I would show them Tree of Life or other [director] Terrence Malick-life references which capture that sort of natural beauty or the magic hour feeling. They really embraced the challenge and really studied how Malick’s work and tried to mimic that in their own workflow which was very gratifying and heartwarming to watch as they effortlessly rose to the occasion.

On top of that, what I loved about the process is when you when you’re shooting a high-quality live-action kids’ television show, you’re hamstrung by so many realities of that day of how much are you going to accomplish, and so many different things can go wrong. In animation we were able to do those sorts of things and kind of get exactly what we wanted to do which literally doesn’t exist in live action.

Let’s talk about the getting the right look for the farm’s animals, and of course, Charlotte.

Well, the mammals were a little more straightforward, but you could always sort of steer it into cute or too cute territory. We arrived at all those pretty quickly. The trickier one was Charlotte, yeah, because there were a lot of questions about it. Did we want to try to mimic what an actual spider looks like? And I made the strong case that we should not, because an actual spider has many eyes and it’s just really creepy! You don’t think about that when you’re reading the book or looking at a drawing. In the live-action version with Julia Roberts that one had a slightly more realistic look, but it does distance the viewer a little bit.

We were working hard to design that character to be as appealing as possible, but as expressive as possible too. She has many hands that she can talk with. I wanted her to look a bit like an eccentric frontierswoman … that’s how how I described it to the animators, and they came up with like a sort of like shawl overcoat in the design. They really ran with it, and that part of animation — the back and forth as you come up with different iterations of character design — is awesome.

Did you refer to Garth Williams’s memorable illustrations in the E.B. White book at all, or did you just wanted to have a fresh start?

I really tried to only think of text the text of the book and even though I did look at the Debbie Reynolds animated version and the live-action version once, I just had to not think about it at all. It just wasn’t going to be helpful. You always hear that Steve Carell didn’t watch the original British version of The Office when he got cast in the American version, and I kind of understand that now. It really doesn’t help to see these other versions because you have to do your own thing.

What would you say was the hardest part of the project?

The hardest part is how long animation takes to make. We spent a few months in the writers’ room, and we were really happy with how the scripts came out. The pace of the series was really rocking. Then, you suddenly start a years-long process of these various iterations that automatically look bad in the beginning because they’re very rough. That gets in your head, and you’re wondering if it’s ever going to look good when it’s done — although everyone who’s more experienced assured me that it will end up looking good. It was just a marathon grind.

More specifically, that first scene with Fern was pretty tricky because that’s the first scene of the book where she comes out fighting, and she’s yelling at her father to save this pig that she’s never even seen before. We had different tones of that where either she seemed too angry or too whiny. Martha White, who is E.B. White’s granddaughter and is the executor of the estate, just had really smart notes about the character to make her more of an impassioned champion, so that she seemed like she was a principled person with a point. That single-handedly organized that whole character, and it was seamless from that point on!

How long did it take to complete the animation?

We wrote it in the beginning of 2022, and began the production in the spring-summer of 2022. We finished in the June of the last year.

Have your own kids seen the movie yet?

I have a five-year old and an eight-year old. They’ve seen different iterations on my laptop along the way, and they’d spend the whole time asking me why are all the trees pink, and I tell them, “Well, they’re not done yet!” They haven’t seen the finished thing. I only really showed them the Templeton stuff.

What do you hope this new take on the classic will achieve?

Honestly, I hope this will be the definitive version of Charlotte’s Web, and that our version gets to the joys and pain of the themes in a more visceral way than its predecessors, which are a lot to live up to. I do admire those films, although I have to say I think Amy Adams is the best Charlotte of all time. She is so pleasant and collaborative that you forget you’re talking to an actual genius, which she absolutely is. I am excited to see how people respond to that performance. Guru Studio did such an amazing job of animating that character.

You know, I have young children, and there are a lot of parents in my life, and I think many candid conversations about death might follow the watching of this film. Yes, there is an incredibly sad thing that happens near the end, but there’s an incredibly hopeful thing that happens after that when Wilbur gets to raise Charlotte’s children. I know that can be an emotional thing for a family to watch together, and I hope it is a memorable experience to share with the whole family.

Charlotte’s Web premieres on HBO Max on Thursday, October 2.