Trolls Band Together is the newest entry in the beloved Trolls movie franchise, and now it’s available on digital or Blu-ray and DVD. In support of the film’s home video release, PopCulture.com had a chance to sit down with the film’s directors Walt Dohrn and Tim Heitz. During our conversation, the pair dished on making the film, getting NSYNC back together for a new single, and how in addition to voicing one of the characters, Branch, Justin Timberlake has another “unique” role behind the scenes.
When asked about putting together the original music for the Trolls films — specifically the song “Better Place,” which marked the first new NSYNC track after more than two decades — Dohrn explained, “It’s a long process. I think for that one in particular, it was one of the most important songs in the movie. I mean they all are, but as far as the narrative goes, it had to be this moment that really showed Branch having the songwriting skills and being able to bring the family together during this big conflict. It had to do that, but then also had to be this big celebration as well. We always knew this is going to be a big song, it’s going to be in two parts and it’s going to be an original.”
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“Justin starts thinking about, ‘How will this work?’ He starts working with other songwriters and they start tooling away at it,” Dohrn continued, “and we started hearing demos of it and we’d hear it over the phone. It doesn’t exist except over the phone, “All right, listen to that, don’t talk about it.” Then it started getting into Justin thinking this would be the perfect song to bring the guys back in on, which was exciting to us. So he really drove that idea quite a bit.”
Heitz then added, “Once he pitched that to us and we were like, ‘That sounds amazing.’ He was like, ‘Well, how about if they’re also characters in the movie?’ And we were like, ‘THAT sounds amazing.’ So we start building in that fun cameo at the end, which, it was a back-and-forth with Justin and we pitched it to the band and got them interested in it. Once they were into it, they even helped design their characters’ looks, the hairstyles and the outfits and stuff. They were totally a part of the creation of those characters in that moment. It was such a fun, just surreal thing to be a part of, and the fact that it was able to happen and feel organic to the story we were already telling I think was just such a cool thing to be a part of.”
Finally, Dohrn explained that when it comes to crafting the songs so that they fit with the story, Timberlake had a significant role in making that happen. “It’s definitely a dialogue between the music and the music team and the story and the story team,” he said. “It’s a little bit of back and forth as we go. I mean, first, it’s there to service the narrative, but because it’s this non-traditional musical, it’s careful and weird how we go about it. It’s still got to push the narrative forward, but in a unique way. Where we find where those originals go is really important. That’s all done with Justin.”
Trolls Band Together is now available on Digital and on Blu-ray™ and DVD from Universal Home Entertainment.
