Director of Netflix's 'In Your Dreams', Alex Woo, Reveals Pixar's "Number One Sin" To Avoid on a Film

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Summary

Collider's Steve Weintraub talks with director Alex Woo for Netflix's In Your Dreams.
In this interview, Woo shares the details and making of, and the inspirations behind his debut feature film.
He reveals the invaluable lessons learned from his time at Pixar, how he designed the two worlds, and the research that went into crafting an emotionally poignant family film.

Netflix's In Your Dreams is a feature debut for both director Alex Woo and his company, Kuku Studios, and this spirited adventure is soaring with critics and audiences alike. The heartwarming tale was at the top of Collider's FYC recommendations and was a nominee for Best Animated Feature at the Critics Choice Awards 2026, alongside titans like KPop Demon Hunters and Disney's Zootopia 2, an honor that Woo calls "the best feeling in the world," during a Q&A with Steve Weintraub. In this conversation, the director shares behind-the-scenes details about the nearly decade-long process, from conceit to finally sharing his creation with the world.

Inspired by his own childhood, Woo's In Your Dreams is an earnest and charming exploration of family dynamics and difficult emotions as siblings Stevie (Jolie Hoang-Rappaport) and Elliot (Elias Janssen) navigate the possibility that their parents, Mom (Cristin Milioti) and Dad (Simu Liu), may be getting a divorce. In the movie, Elliot finds a book that reveals that the Sandman (Omid Djalili) can grant wishes, which sets the two of them (and Baloney Tony, voiced by Craig Robinson!) off on an epic quest through an unpredictable, wonderful, and whimsical dream world to locate this mysterious being and save their family.

After a recent screening, Woo joined Weintraub on stage for a Q&A to share his and his team's process for the film's story and animation. After a decade at Pixar, he divulges the lessons learned on projects like WALL-E and Ratatouille, and how those lessons helped him helm an animated feature that travels through not one but two vibrant worlds with unique aesthetics. He talks about his own favorite animated movies, where he took inspiration from, like Adventure Time, and reveals Easter eggs and exciting scenes that had to be cut for time. Check out all of this and more in the video above, or in the full transcript below.

Alexander Woo’s Animation Journey Took Him From Pixar to Breakfast Town

“I really kind of got my PhD in storytelling there at Pixar.”

Alex Woo on the red carpet for Netflix's In Your Dreams premiere.

COLLIDER: I’ve got a bunch of questions for you, but I always like throwing a curveball at the beginning, and this is probably the most important thing I'm going to ask. As someone who's directed an animated film and worked on animation, what is your favorite Studio Ghibli movie?

ALEXANDER WOO: Oh, man, that is a curveball. It's probably Porco Rosso.

Is there a reason?

WOO: I just love planes. I love pig pilots. [Laughs] I don't know. I watched it when I was a kid, and it just stuck with me. I love it so much. It's so funny. That troop of schoolgirls is just so cute and so charming. I just love it. [Hayao] Miyazaki did, in the ‘80s, did [My Neighbor] Totoro, then he did Kiki's [Delivery Service], and then he did Porco Rosso. Those three films of his, tonally, are just so uplifting and positive. I love his later stuff, too, like [Princess] Mononoke and Spirited Away, but it was a little darker. So, I love that period where he was doing stuff that was just really fun and light and makes you feel good about life.

For people who are watching this or are here in the audience, if you have not seen Studio Ghibli movies, we're here to promote, obviously, Netflix, and In Your Dreams, but you should also scope those out.

WOO: Oh, yeah. They are fantastic. You’ve got to watch them.

I read that you worked at Pixar for a while, and I believe you worked on Ratatouille, WALL-E, Finding Dory, and The Good Dinosaur. What did you learn at Pixar as a story artist and behind the scenes that really stuck with you so that now that you're a director, those kinds of things permeate?

WOO: We were talking about this earlier: you went to film school, and I went to film school. When you come out of film school, you think you know a lot, and then you get into the real world in the industry, and you're like, “Oh my gosh, I know nothing.” So, I feel like I learned, actually, about filmmaking and storytelling. I really kind of got my PhD in storytelling there at Pixar, working with the greats like Brad Bird, Andrew Stanton, John Lasseter, and Pete Docter, and I think the biggest takeaway for me was this philosophy that story is king, right? Every single decision you make has to service the story, because if you don't do that, your audience is going to get bored. You can’t bore your audience. That's like the number one sin of a director is that they're boring their audience. So, it was really servicing the story and making sure that you're looking at everything through that lens of, “How am I servicing the story? How am I servicing the characters in this film?”

What do you think would surprise people to learn about directing an animated movie at Netflix?

WOO: I don't know if this is specific to Netflix, but animation just takes forever. I'm sure you guys know that, but this movie, I came up with the idea with my co-director and my co-creator at the beginning of 2017. So from then until now, it's been like nine years, which is a long, long time. I joke that human babies take nine months to make, and animated movie babies take nine years. So, yeah, that's the one thing about animation; I think people don't realize how long it takes to make.

Stevie (Jolie Hoang-Rappaport) and Elliot (Elias Janssen) look up from a bed in 'In Your Dreams'

One of the things I think people don't realize about animation is that certain shots are more expensive than others. With In Your Dreams, what is a shot that people might not realize is a really expensive shot, where the animation team was like, “Are you really, really sure that you need this?”

WOO: There's a couple. Breakfast Town, that wide shot was very expensive just because of the number of characters in there, and the set is huge. Anytime you have a bunch of different characters, in animation, you have to build everything from scratch. You don't get anything for free; you can't just take a camera and go to, like, Times Square and have a bunch of extras go into the shot. You have to build all those extras. So, that shot was very expensive.

Anytime you have a lot of effects, it's really expensive, so all the Nightmara shots were incredibly expensive. She was the most expensive character, by far, because she was basically a walking, talking, visual effect. The turnaround time from when we approved animation to when we ran it through the effects pipeline was 11 weeks. So imagine approving a shot, having to wait 11 weeks to see the final render, and then realizing there's some sort of mistake. Then you have to do it all over again: reanimate the shot re-put it through the pipeline, and wait another 11 weeks. So, her character and all the shots that she's in are definitely the most expensive in the film.

Animation Technology Is Always Evolving

“I don't plan on using AI in any films that I make.”

Stevie looking afraid while Elliot is excited and Baloney Tony is holding on in a scene from In Your Dreams

You've been in the industry for a while now. How has technology changed from when you first got involved to what you're able to do on this, and what do you see technology being able to do in the short term and long term to help make animated movies faster, better, whatever the right word is?

WOO: I think just the render and the GPU power have really increased since we started making this film, and we started production in 2020. So, that brings down your render time, and that brings down the amount of time that it takes for you to see a preview of a shot to the final image. That's just going to continue, which is great because that just means you can do more in less time.

Obviously, there's the A.I. piece of it. A.I. did not exist when we were making this film. It started really hitting the mainstream by the time this movie came out. We didn't use any AI in this film. I don't plan on using AI in any films that I make in the future, but who knows what's going to happen. I think that technology is incredibly powerful. I haven't seen anything in animation that's been generated by A.I. that really excites me. It's impressive. You look at it, and you go, “Wow, they did that in how long, and you just had to text prompt it?” But aesthetically, you look at it, and it's just, I don't know, it's just kind of meh.

Crafting a Wonderful World of Dreams

Alex Woo and his team set out to make the “first Western animated dream movie.”

Stevie on the bed with her brother Elliot and Baloney Tony looking over the headboard in In Your Dreams

Let's go backwards. What was it about this story, these characters, this world that said, “I want to make this?”

WOO: It was two things. When I left Pixar, I left in 2016, and we started this small, independent company called Kuku Studios. We spent the first year just dreaming up ideas for movies and TV shows that we wanted to see that we felt like nobody else was making, and one of the ideas that we stumbled upon was a movie about the world of dreams. We hadn't seen an animated movie about the world of dreams that had been done really well. Actually, in Western animation, there hadn't been one at all. In eastern animation, like in anime, you have Paprika, which is a great film, but it's not very family-friendly, and then obviously in live-action, you have Inception, which is one of the greatest dream movies ever made.

Are you sure? Because the way it ends… I’m joking.

WOO: [Laughs] But I hadn't seen anything done in animation in that space, and so we just felt like it's one of those things that's a universal human experience. Everybody across time, across culture, dreams, so it just felt like this was a wide-open space that nobody had tapped into. So we were like, “We’ve got to make the first Western animated dream movie.”

Then, when we started doing it, we realized, “Oh, this is why nobody's ever done it.” It’s really hard to make an animated dream movie because it's really hard to give a dream movie stakes, because what happens in a dream? Anything can happen. And when anything can happen, nothing really means anything, right? So we had to figure out how do we give this movie stakes? And for that, I thought about my own childhood and my own family. When I was a kid, my parents almost split up, and it was really hard for me and my brother to deal with and navigate it. I remember one morning, my mom, she had her bags packed, and she was in front of the front door of our house, and she had to gently explain to me and my brother that she was leaving for a little while to figure things out for herself and for our family. I remember watching her pull out of the driveway and leaving, and all I wanted at that moment was to find a way to save my family.

I told the story to my team, and they're like, “We're so sorry that happened to you, but that's a really compelling story. It's such a great, rootable want for a character.” And so we thought, well, what if we have a kid who's going through something like this, and then she stumbles upon this mythology, this legend that if you can find the Sandman in the dream world, he can make your dreams come true? And then suddenly, we felt we had a way to give stakes to a movie that took place in the world of dreams, where we could connect what happened in the dream world to what happened in the real world.

Elliot and Stevie talking to Mom at the table during breakfast.

Talk a little bit about coming up with the dreams and the nightmares, and what it was like figuring out what the line is that's safe for families, while also appealing to adults.

WOO: When we started the film, we gave everybody on our story team dream journals, and we asked them to write down all the dreams that they were willing to share — because not all dreams you want to share with everybody — and share them with the group. We really wanted the film to be authentic in terms of the types of dreams that we portrayed, and the types of dreams that Stevie and Elliot would have to go through. So, a lot of the dreams that ended up in the film were dreams that people on our team had, that they wrote down in their dream journals at, like, three in the morning when they woke up in the middle of the night.

A lot of them are dreams from my own subconscious, like that naked dream is one that I've had since I was a kid. It's so ironic. It's always in a department store, and I'm surrounded by clothes, but I can't wear any of them. I don't know what it means, but it's a dream that I've had for, like, 30-something years, so I was like, “I’ve got to put that in the film.”

I’ve got to ask, since the movie has come out, have you had the dream?

WOO: Yes. And now it's actually in that department store; it's not the department store that I grew up with. This movie has weirdly sort of infected my brain, and now I dream about the movie, which is really meta and weird. The teeth falling out dream is something that I have all the time. I mean, it's a stress dream, and making this movie was very stressful. So, I had that dream a lot.

Sandman and Nightmara Had an Epic Dream World Battle

The Sandman (Omid Djalili) walks up steps with Elliot (Elias Janssen) and Stevie (Jolie Hoang-Rappaport) in 'In Your Dreams'

One of the things about animation, and especially, I'm sure, you saw at Pixar, is that things can really dramatically change during the story process, because it's free to keep putting up storyboards, and it's only when you start…

WOO: It’s not free, but it's a lot cheaper.

Yeah, it's a lot cheaper than once you start animating. So, from where you started to what people saw tonight or can see on Netflix at home, what were some of the dramatic changes along the way?

WOO: Well, our first cut of the movie was two hours and 20 minutes. Now it's under 90. So, there's a lot that we left on the cutting room floor. I love the two-hour and 20-minute version, but it's way too expensive.

I have to pause right there, real quick. Was it storylines that were removed? Was it characters? Or was it more like, you're in the dream world? What was the big change?

WOO: All of the above. We had more backstory with the Sandman and Nightmara, but with Nightmara, she was so expensive that there was no way we could pull this off. We had to scale down a lot of her on-screen time. So, we had more backstory with Sandman and Nightmara. We had a lot more dreamscapes that Stevie and Elliot would enter, and they're really, really cool.

We actually just released this portfolio of the art of some of the development artwork that we did for the film, and you can see some of the dreamscapes that we had originally developed for the film that didn't make it to the final film. That was also, again, very expensive to do. Every time you do a new dreamscape, it's a brand-new set, and then you have to do two versions because you're doing a dream version and a nightmare version. So, we had to scale that down. And then, new characters. Every time they went to a new dreamscape, we had new characters. So, it was all of the above, and that's why we had to cut those down.

If you could have done like five or 10 minutes of the stuff you had to cut out, what's the thing that was the hardest to let go? What was your one scene or sequence where you're like, “I can't believe I have to let this go?”

WOO: We used to have a big fight scene between Sandman and Nightmara, and it was so cool. You can imagine, it was like dreams versus nightmares. Sandman is sort of like the villain in the film, you realize at the end, and he was so funny because he was sending these really fun, happy dreams as attacks, like a baby unicorn, and then Nightmara would use spiders and nightmares and things to save and combat these super positive, happy dreams. So it was really cool. It was a great action piece and set piece, and it was also really funny, but it was just way, way too expensive.

Are there any Easter eggs that people should look out for the next time they watch?

WOO: So our company, Kuku Studios, our first production was this show called Go! Go! Cory Carson, I don't know if you guys have seen it, but there are a couple of Easter eggs in the film. We put Go! Go! Cory Carson stickers on Elliot's bed. In Polly's Pizzeria, there are Go! Go! Cory Carson car rides where kids go in and they're pretending to drive the car. There are Go! Go! Cory Carson models. I think that's it. Yeah, there's a couple. There's a Go! Go! Cory Carson sticker on Elliot's helmet. Those are the Easter eggs from our earlier production.

‘In Your Dreams’ Tackles Real-World Issues with Heart

“How do you balance this real-world, intimate, personal story about a kid trying to keep their family together, and also make it really entertaining?”

Steve, Mom, Dad with a guitar, and Elliot sitting on bench on a porch together.

One of the things I think this film does so well is that it mixes in real-world family issues that I think everyone can relate to with humor that's not aimed at the lowest common denominator. You have a great mix between those two things.

WOO: We have some lowest common denominator, like laser farts.

I don't actually count laser farts as the lowest common denominator.

WOO: It’s elevated.

Yeah, it is. It's elevated humor. That's fine to me. I don't want to get specific with certain things, but talk a little bit about how you figured out the balancing act of humor versus real world, and what you felt you could get away with for a film that's going to be for all ages?

WOO: That's what I love about movies. My favorite films are the ones that speak to audiences of all ages and have a layered approach to them, and there's something for young audiences and something for older audiences. That's what I tried to do with this film. I knew that because we were dealing with such challenging subject matter of a kid trying to keep their family together, we had to balance out the tone of that with a lot of jokes and a lot of great comedy. So, that was really the biggest challenge with the film is how do you balance this real-world, intimate, personal story about a kid trying to keep their family together and also make it really entertaining and take advantage of all the humor and the spectacle that a dream movie could offer?

Just like I asked you at the beginning with Pixar and what you learned, obviously making this must have been a massive learning curve. What was the big lesson or two that you learned, so the next time you make a film, it'll be with you?

WOO: I knew what it took to make an animated film because I'd been on so many of them on the story side, but never in the director's chair. The biggest thing that I learned is how important your team is. I always knew that because the animation is such a collaborative medium, but especially on the technical side. It's not my area of expertise, and so I really needed to lean on my team and make sure that they could translate my notes and my ideas to the team that they were running. So, yeah, I think it's just the teamwork. The collaboration was a huge part of the process.

I'm sure there are people watching this right now, and people in the audience who would love to work in the field of animation. What's your advice for someone who wants to do what you do or just work in animation?

WOO: The great thing is that to become a better filmmaker, you get to watch a lot of films. You’ve got to watch a lot of films. It's homework that you like doing. That's why I went to film school, and that's why I wanted to become a filmmaker, because I loved watching movies much more so than I like doing homework. So, when I realized, “Oh my gosh, you can go to film school, and instead of writing papers, you get to make movies, and instead of going to the library, you get to go to the movie theater,” I was like, “Sign me up.”

So, it's not novel or new advice, but I think people don't spend the time to build their library of knowledge of all these incredible films. And the amazing thing is, the medium is still so young. It's only, like, 100 years old, right? It's not like literature, which has been around for thousands of years, and it's like impossible to have an encyclopedic knowledge of all the literature that's been made, or that's been written. With film, it's possible for you to watch maybe not every single film that's made, but the majority of them. I mean, if you're really dedicated, you can just take the time, watch a movie a day, and in 10 years, you'll probably watch 60 or 70% of all the films that have ever been made.

I don’t know if that percentage is accurate, but I do agree that if you put your mind to watching the big ones, you can get through and really have a foundation.

WOO: [Laughs] Like I said, I'm not technical. Numbers are not my strong suit.

The ‘In Your Dreams’ Team Consulted Child Psychologists

“We wanted to make sure that we were doing right by kids who were going through a similar experience.”

Stevie, Baloney Tony and Elliot are lying on their bed, looking up dreamily.

One of the things I found fascinating was that I read that you showed an early cut of the film to two child psychologists. I'm so fascinated by that because that must have been a very informative process. What did they say about what you showed them, and how did their input change the finished film?

WOO: That was really important to us. That’s actually something that I learned during my time at Pixar was to research, because audiences are smart. They can tell if you haven't researched your subject matter. So, that was really important to us, and especially because we were dealing with such challenging subject matter. We wanted to make sure that we were doing right by kids who were going through a similar experience.

That was one of the first things we did was talk to child psychologists. We showed them the first two cuts of the film, and nothing actually really changed. The biggest impact that they had was that they validated a lot of the initial instincts that we had about how to handle these characters and how these characters would respond to a situation that they're in. The biggest thing that they said to us was, “We're so glad that you were not afraid to have these characters go through the gamut of emotions that you have them go through in your film.” Especially with Stevie. She gets pretty upset about the whole situation, and she gets angry about it. What they told us is that kids really do get angry when their parents are not getting along and there's conflict in the household. A lot of times [with] kids, the emotions that they go through are anger, and so we didn't shy away from that. The biggest impact it had was that it really validated the approach that we were taking to the film.

If you could get any IP and make an animated movie or an animated series, what is the thing you would love to be able to play with?

WOO: Oh, man.

The wish-fulfillment moment.

WOO: I would love to make a sequel to Porco Ross.

Oh, wow.

WOO: It would be amazing. I know Miyazaki will never let me do that, but this is a dream.

Have you had those dreams or visions of, “This is what I would do?”

WOO: No, because I know it would never happen. But I just love how he ends the film. If you guys haven't seen it, I'm going to spoil it for you now, but it’s about this guy who's got this curse, and you don't know why he has the head of a pig. At the end, the curse is lifted, but they never show what he actually looks like as a human being. I just always wanted to know what his life is like after this curse is lifted. So, that's what I would want to do.

'In Your Dreams' Was Nominated for Best Animated Feature at the Critics Choice Awards

“Making movies is kind of like making food for your friends.”

Simu Liu and director Alex Woo on the red carpet for Netflix's In Your Dreams premiere.

Your film was nominated as one of the Best Animated Features for the Critics Choice Awards, which just took place the other night — spoiler alert, KPop [Demon Hunters] won.

WOO: Deservedly so.

KPop is another Netflix film, so we can talk about it. But also, you're at 86% after a ton of reviews on Rotten Tomatoes. What does it mean to you to have so many critics and so many people loving your movie?

WOO: It's wonderful. It's the best feeling in the world. I tell people that making movies is kind of like making food for your friends, like you're cooking for a bunch of friends. You’re inviting them over for dinner, and you prepare for hours and days ahead of time, and you're slaving over the kitchen and the stove, and when they all come, you just want them to enjoy the food, you know? It's an act of love. You just want to give to your audience. And every single person who worked on this film poured so much of themselves into the film, and you just want the audience to receive it and enjoy it and love it. So, it's the best feeling. Everybody I meet who tells me that they love the film, I just tell them, “Thank you for letting me love you,” in this weird, non-creepy way. [Laughs]

Sincerely, thank you for making something I really enjoyed and just dug.

Designing Two Worlds in One

“I'm such a greedy filmmaker.”

I have one last question for you. How did you decide on the look and feel of the aesthetic of the film? Because I know you worked with Sony Pictures.

WOO: Yeah, Imageworks.

I'm just curious, because it could look so many different ways. Talk a little bit about the aesthetic of the film before we wrap.

WOO: My production designer, Steve Pilcher, is kind of a legend in the industry. He did Finding Dory, he did Soul, he did Brave. So, bringing him onto the film, one of our first conversations was like, “What is this film going to look like?” And he has the same approach and philosophy to filmmaking as I do, which is you’ve got to service the story. I didn't want to impose a style onto the film just for style’s sake, just because I liked it. I really wanted to know what does the movie need and what does this movie specifically need?

Because it takes place in two different worlds, you have the dream world and the real world, I knew that you needed to create contrast there. I couldn't make the real world too stylized, because if it were, then you'd have nowhere to go with the dream world. So, that led us to this really more grounded, sort of real-world aesthetic for the real world, and that gave us the opportunity to really push the design when we get to the dream world. You have the man-eating hot dog. I mean, Breakfast Town is just super cartoony. I love Adventure Time, and so a lot of the designs in that world are inspired by Adventure Time. And then, the furthest departure is the anime version. Some of the characters, which I love that part of the film.

So, that's sort of how we thought about it. What I love so much about this film is that, because I love animation so much and animation can do so much in terms of aesthetics and design, and I'm such a greedy filmmaker, I wanted all of those possibilities in this one film, and the fact that it took place in a dream world allowed me to explore all those different stylistic choices. So, that's sort of how we thought about it, is really, just what does the story need, and how do we create contrast between the dream world in the real world?

In Your Dreams is available to stream on Netflix.