Pictures courtesy of Netflix
Wolf King is now streaming on Netflix and has been receiving a wave of positive reviews. The series, an adaptation of the novels by Curtis Jobling, has been in development for several years—and as of yesterday, the first eight episodes are finally available to watch.
The show closely follows the books, telling the story of Drew, a young man who is thrust into a massive conflict after discovering he’s the heir to a kingdom—and that he possesses the power to transform into a werewolf.
Jobling, a renowned illustrator, animator, and author, was involved in all aspects of the production. Naturally, we had plenty of questions for him about his role in bringing the series to life.
Conducted via email, here are our questions and Curtis Jobling’s in-depth answers, shared on the day of the show’s release.
WoN: You’ve mentioned this has been a 15-year process in getting your novels adapted – can you take us back to the beginning and how the books ended up being adapted at Netflix?
15 years in the making is really harking back to the writing of the first novel in the Wereworld series, Rise of the Wolf, which was picked up by Penguin in 2010 and published the following year. It’s probably fair to say that, as I come from the animation industry initially, my writing is cinematic in tone. I grew up on old black and white serial TV shows from the States like Flash Gordon and King of the Rocket Men. That, and my love of high fantasy and horror, undoubtedly influenced me in my writing style. It’s probably the reason why it was crying out to be adapted for many years; I love a good cliffhanger ending, and the Wereworld novels – and now Wolf King – are full of them!
Five more novels were subsequently commissioned and published by Penguin worldwide, which brought the characters to an enormous global audience. And that’s where they remained for the following years, characters on the page as opposed to screen.
It was Alexi Wheeler at Netflix, who, at the time, approached me about adapting the show in 2019. He’d previously been at Nickelodeon, where he’d also asked why Wereworld hadn’t been adapted. You have to remember this was a time when animation that told series-spanning story arcs simply didn’t exist. It was too ambitious a concept for a regular traditional broadcaster. But thanks to Netflix’s strides and leading the way in platform broadcasting, the landscape had changed dramatically. As a fan of the books, Alexi championed it from the start.
Picture: Netflix
Did you always envision an adaptation being an animated series? I know you’ve had a lot of experience in the world of animation, so was it a natural fit?
Our initial thought was live-action, with Lime Pictures and myself considering different locations that could double up for the mythical continent of Lyssia. Ireland and North Wales received a lot of attention from us before we realised animation might be the way forward. Rather than trying to adapt a real world location into a fantasy world – an expensive endeavour at the best of times – animation allowed us to create that fantasy world from scratch, with no limitations. I was very comfortable with that concept, with my background having originally been in the animation industry. I knew exactly what edge it could give us.
Our next challenge at Lime was to find an animation studio we could collaborate with, and we hit the jackpot when we met up with Jellyfish Pictures. With my producer from Lime, Tim Compton, and our director at Jellyfish, Tom Brass, both sharing the wheel and steering the Good Ship Wolf King, we really did form a dream team and it’s remained that way throughout the last five years on production.
What was your role on the project day-to-day? Who did you work alongside to bring the world you’d crafted to life?
My role on production, in addition to being creator and associate producer, was head writer alongside ace producer Tim Compton, who himself had been a fan of the books for some years. I’ve probably got Alexi to thank for that, as he went to bat for me from the get-go, insisting I take a crack at adapting the books – after all, nobody knew the stories like me, and with my animation background, I understood exactly what it takes to turn a book into a show.
My daily role as a producer involved being involved in all creative decisions from the beginning, attending every production meeting, reviewing all production design work and feeding back notes, helping edit scripts, etc. It’s worth bearing in mind that the first 18 months of development and production took place during lockdown, with each of us attending our production meetings on Zoom and Teams calls. I reckon every member of that key creative team knows the interior of my writing shed intimately by now!
I consider myself very fortunate that I got to remain so involved in the adaptation of the books. For many authors it would likely prove a painful process seeing their original material going through the metamorphosis which is key to adapting from page to screen. It’s never going to be the exact same story – compromise is key when bringing a novel to life in a new medium, especially when the story is so enormous and continent-spanning as the Wereworld books are. With that in mind, I’d be at pains to say that Wolf King, though very closely following the stories of the Wereworld novels, will throw up some surprises along the way for fans of the books. Most importantly, just like in the books – nobody is safe!
Wolf King. Cr. COURTESY OF NETFLIX © 2024
Can you talk about how you tackled adapting the books? The series seems more inspired by the timeline as opposed to following them 1:1 – what was the decision-making process there about which stories to pull from first and foremost?
I was tasked with adapting all six novels in the Wereworld series into a rough overarching storyline before Netflix commissioned the adaptation of the first books – Rise of the Wolf and Rage of Lions. Much of this process was led by my producer and fellow head writer, Tim, who deftly handled adapting the books whilst also staying true to their theme and tone. Alongside a team of brilliant writers (Julie Bower, Andrew Burrell, and Celia Morgan), we worked up sixteen half-hour episodes, with the plot of each novel covered by eight episodes.
The novels are very linear in structure, with the first one told entirely from our hero, Drew Ferran’s perspective. As we move into the second book and beyond, and our protagonists (and antagonists) get pulled apart, the novels begin to expand in shape, following different storylines whilst Drew’s tale remains at the heart of the entire story. With that in mind, it was pretty easy to follow the shape and structure of the novels. The challenge for us, with an enormous cast of source characters, was to work out just how many of them could feature in our show. Hopefully we’ve made the fans of the original novels very happy indeed. I know I am, if that counts for anything.
The series features a very distinct animation style that I’d compare to Arcane – a kind of stop motion/claymation. I also thought the lighting looked spectacular throughout. Can you walk me through working with Lime Pictures/Jellyfish Pictures and how the production evolved to that style?
Have to say, All Hail Tom Brass! Tom’s our director at Jellyfish, and his fingerprints are all over the show. When Tom first met with Tim and I, and he realised we were talking about an animated fantasy horror series, he and I played a game of SNAP when it came to artistic influences and touchstones. Mike Mignola and Frank Frazetta got instant name-checks, and other artists whose names aren’t alliterative got a nod, too.
Wolf King has been an incredibly satisfying and collaborative experience. Having two studios in Lime and Jellyfish who were so utterly simpatico was remarkable.
The style of the show does have a unique look to it. And thanks for the Arcane reference, too – we’re aimed at a slightly younger audience, although it’s fair to say that tonally, Wolf King, with its good and evil and every shade of grey, is in a similar sphere as that show. Not every character is going to make it to the end of our story. There’s genuine peril, and some pretty shocking moments that viewers won’t have seen before in an animated show.
There’s a distinctly sculpted look to the characters, which makes them look like they’re maquettes or stop-motion puppets, perhaps thanks to us bringing in Andrea Blasich (Spider-Man: Into The Spiderverse) to sculpt our heroes in the first instance. As my early industry experience was in stop motion, this was a delight on a personal level. But artistically, it sets us apart from other shows. We’re also shooting on twos and ones. Without sounding too technical, I mean the frame rate can shift according to what’s happening on the screen, which can give the action sequences an uncanny quality that makes viewers question whether they’re watching stop motion or CGI animation.
Picture: Netflix
I’d dare say that the show is distinctly British – would you agree with that? Was that a conscious decision?
We have a very British – dare I say northern – tone to the show, but I hope it still appeals to folk around the world. The books were based (at least initially) on a kind of medieval fantasy version of northern Europe, with bears, boars, foxes, and stags all featuring heavily. As the series develops, the world opens up to Drew and his friends, as he encounters more exotic Werelords along the way. Hopefully, though, it’s a modern Britain we see on the screen, with a truly representative cast of characters.
Killer cast – lots of newcomers and some very recognizable names and voices, again, very British! – can you talk about the process of casting those?
That’s always such a great part, writing up a wishlist of actors for any show. Pretty much all the established actors who we shortlistedjumped aboard the show. It’s an immense buzz for me that we have such luminaries as Paterson Joseph, David Dawson, Kate Fleetwood, and Ralph Ineson lending their voices to our cast. Our young heroes (and villains) represent the very best of British acting talent: Georgia Lock, Chris Lew Kum Hoi, Nina Barker Francis, Colin Ryan, Louis Landau, Kim Adis, and Tom Rhys Harries. Watch out for those names!
Special mention goes to Ceallach Spellman, the voice of our young, troubled hero, Drew Ferran, who really does get put through the ringer in this show. It’s an emotional rollercoaster, to say the least, and Cel brings innocence and honesty to the part that few other actors could do. He’s a good lad, even if he is a City fan…
Wolf King is now streaming on Netflix globally.
Rating: TV-Y7
