‘Trolls: Band Together’ Production Designer on Crafting That Colorful and ‘Wacky’ Car Chase

Brainstorming about how “Trolls: Band Together” should look, the creatives decided they wanted to take the colorful creatures to a different world than the previous two installments of the animated franchise.
In this tale, Queen Poppy (Anna Kendrick) learns that Branch (Justin Timberlake) was once part of her favorite boyband, BroZone. When his brother Floyd (Troye Sivan) is kidnapped by pop star villains voiced by Andrew Rannells and Amy Schumer, Branch and Poppy bring the band back together to rescue him, embarking on a grand adventure culminating in a huge concert that turns into a rollercoaster-esque car chase. The pop world explodes with glitter, sparkle — and, like the rest of the trolls’ world, color.

The chase scene was a last-minute idea, according to production designer Ruben Perez Reynoso.
“When we watched the concert sequence, it felt similar to the end of the last movie,” he says, so they added a chase scene as the villians are giving their concert. This allowed the team to get inventive. The vehicles the characters used bounced to the beat of the music. “It was wacky, and for color, we wanted very artificial colors,” he says. “We were looking at high fashion and makeup because we wanted it to feel as if you were inside a jewelry box.”

Another fun invention: an animal-inspired RV called Rhonda. “We came up with this thought that Rhonda’s exterior would resemble an armadillo,” he says. “And his shell was made out of soccer ball patches that accordions in and out.”

As for Rhonda’s interior, it was equipped with a refrigerator, couch and nunchucks. “Everything you need to survive in the middle of nowhere,” says Perez Reynoso.