by Liam Ridolfi
Kirk Hendry and Neil Boyle co-direct an animated feature-length adaptation of Michael Morpurgo’s beloved novel, Kensuke’s Kingdom.
“I remember the very first conversation that Neil and I had [about the project],” says Kiwi Kirk Hendry. “We went to a cafe in Soho, Bruno’s on Wardour Street, after [producer] Sarah Radclyffe first sent us the screenplay. We hadn’t actually read the book at this point. We were having our chips and beans, and I remember thinking that I didn’t initially have a way in. Neil said that you could do this like Sergio Leone. As soon as he said that I started seeing pictures immediately about how we were going to approach it in a cinematic silent film kind of way. And that just immediately gave us a way in.”
“Michael Morpurgo was very much involved with what we were doing,” adds Neil Boyle. “Although Kirk and I needed to feel our way through it and make it cinematic, when we’d done animatics, drawings and designs, we’d always show them to Michael and get his feedback just to keep us centred to make sure we were never drifting too far away from the main themes. Michael rarely had anything to say other than, ‘I like what you’re doing guys and just make sure you keep to the heart of the book’.”
The themes at the heart of the classic book are the human need for connection, and “the question of what is a family –blood family, which is the one most of us have if we’re fortunate,” Hendry offers. “But then, of course, there’s found families, which is just as valid and important as your blood family. And then there’s also the sort of family of all of the creatures on the planet, all the creatures on the island. Kensuke’s Kingdom is essentially a metaphor for our planet.”
The book was adapted into a screenplay by revered writer Frank Cottrell Boyce (24 Hour Party People, Millions, Goodbye Christopher Robin), with the imaginative story of Michael, shipwrecked on an island, given voice by actors such as Cillian Murphy, Sally Hawkins, Ken Watanabe, Raffey Cassidy and Aaron MacGregor.
The film also explores themes of isolation and the bonds that can form between seemingly very different individuals. How do you feel about these themes resonating in today’s world, where we’re finding many people experiencing feelings of isolation despite being more connected than ever?
Neil Doyle: “Definitely. Here’s an interesting thing – we took eight and a half years to raise the money to do this film, and pretty much on the day we got the money, COVID lockdown hit; finally got the money to make the film, but we’re suddenly all isolated and we can’t work together in the studio. But we had a terrific production team that figured out how to make the cogs of this machine work. We were all working from our own homes or our own bedrooms or studios. So, in a funny way, we channelled this because this is what the film is about, it’s about us all trying to make connections and trying to make something creative and tell the story while we’re all isolated and trying to find a new way of communicating with each other. The making of the film really did reflect the themes within the film.”
Kirk Hendry: “I don’t think that we were directly thinking about that, outside of subconsciously. But certainly, Michael and Kensuke’s behaviour on the island connects far more to our childhood. I grew up in New Zealand, so you’re always out in the countryside. You’re always out playing sport. There wasn’t the technology when we were kids, but the thing is that it still was something that I certainly miss. We’re all addicted to our devices, and you spend eight hours a day in front of a computer and then doing work on a computer and then you’re on phone outside of that. It’s a kind of madness going on in society that we’ve all succumbed to. I think Kensuke reminds me of what life was like before that and I think if there’s any subconscious inspiration people can take from that, to get out there and connect with the world, not just people, but nature.”

Creating a film like Kensuke’s Kingdom, with its emotional depth and complex themes, must affect you as creators just as much as the audience. What personal insights have you experienced through bringing this story to life and what would you like audiences to take away from the film?
Neil Doyle: “From my point of view, there are themes in here that talk about fatherhood. Without getting too much into my personal life, but my parents broke up when I was young and I still saw my dad, but I would travel between my mum and my dad. I had a bit more of a distant relationship with my dad, and I spent quite a lot of my youth growing up in retrospect, attaching myself to father figures and art teachers or somebody that taught me at work. I’ve got three of my own kids now. I think those themes of fatherhood, of Kensuke in the beginning, when you have the flashback in the film and he’s got his son and the son goes to hug him and he pushes his son away, and then by the end of the film he can resolve that with Michael… He gets his second chance at fatherhood, if you like, by this boy just appearing on his island. I think those stirred up a lot of things in my mind about my own childhood and about my own position as a father now. It certainly made me think a lot about those kinds of things that touched me very personally.”
Kirk Hendry: “The question of what do you want the audience to take away from the film is the hardest question to ask. Something that I do think is very interesting about it though, is that it’s a relatively slow film and a relatively gentle film. There is action-adventure stuff in it, but the fact that it’s actually got so much breathing space in all of the scenes, and we’ve shown it with ages from 2-year-olds up to 90-year-olds, and we were always concerned that children or people in general will start getting restless and bored in the slower scenes, but they don’t. In an age where everything is edited so fast, everything’s so loud, everything is so terrified of losing the audience’s engagement, actually, the inverse is true. If you actually slow things down and allow things to develop and people to get into the characters and get into the world, that engages them far more than if you’re just cutting all the time and bombarding them with noise and dialogue.”
Kensuke’s Kingdom is available now on Digital