Twilight of the Gods, an all-new epic animated retelling of Norse mythology, recently premiered on Netflix. In a realm of legendary heroes and epic conflicts, King Leif (Stuart Martin), a mortal warrior, finds love and salvation in Sigrid (Sylvia Hoeks), a fearless fighter, when she saves him on the battlefield. But their bliss is short-lived, as Thor's wrathful assault on their wedding night sets them on a daring quest for retribution. Joined by a fearless band of crusaders, Leif and Sigrid brave treacherous landscapes, blood-soaked battles, and divine wars, venturing into the very depths of Hell and beyond, in a heroic story of love, loss, and revenge.

Recently, director and executive producer Zack Snyder, along with executive producers Deborah Snyder and Wesley Coller, spoke with SciFi Vision about creating the animated series, which can now be streamed in its entirety on Netflix.

Read the full transcript below.

SCIFI VISION:   How did the idea for the series come about? I mean, obviously, it came partially from Norse mythology, but where did the idea to make it come from?

ZACK SNYDER:  Originally, we had been talking with Netflix Animation about doing the project. We didn't have anything locked in. Then, Jay [Oliva] and I were talking about doing something, and Jay was like, “What about Norse mythology?” Then, we brought that up Netflix, and they were like, “Do you want to do that, a Norse thing?” And I was like, “Yeah, I love Norse mythology.” Then, Jay and I just started to dig in on what the story would be. Then, we pitched it back to them again, and they were like, “We love that; go do it.” That was all in 2019, so, that was a while ago. Then, we really started digging into the show in 2020, and we've been doing it ever since, and now it's coming out. So, it was quite an odyssey. But it's an incredibly satisfying and fun experience to draw it and then see it, because, like I was saying, when you do a live action thing, I draw it, and then it all sort of changes a little bit, because of humans and all that, but, with the animation, you can really just go. The process of drawing to what you see on screen is a much straighter line.

SCIFI VISION:   How closely were the three of you involved in the actual character design and how early on, I guess, was everything? It sounds like everything was kind of figured out early then.

ZACK SNYDER:  Well, the character design was a huge odyssey of the actual animation style. We worked on [it] in house. We had our own designers all in house, and I really pushed that. I pushed them and pushed them and pushed them. I kept rejecting everything, until we finally got to this. What I was really looking for was something that really captured 2D and mythology and had almost a storybook quality to it. That's what I was really looking for. So, yeah, we were all very involved in the design.

DEBORAH SNYDER:  By the way, that was the most important, I mean, other than the scripts, because you need a great story. It all begins with story, but then the sky's the limit, right? You have to create every single thing, so that's exciting and daunting all at the same time. You know, nothing comes for free. Every bit of like, what they're doing when someone else is talking, you have to do in animation. So, really getting that look down and figuring out what it was like, once we had that, then it was applying that to the rest of the things, and making sure that it was consistent. I think what helped was because we had this in house team. And when I say in house, we weren't physically in house, because we were also partially during the pandemic, so people were at their places designing, but we would always come together and do reviews and see everything. I feel like that's what kept the consistency throughout the episodes and throughout the show.

WESLEY COLLER:  I think that really does encapsulate it. I think that, for us, to echo what they're saying, it really was about landing on on a look that celebrated the 2D nature of it but also had a beautiful simplicity to it, to be able to be a foundation for this fantastical story we wanted to tell with these layers of characters and worlds. I just couldn't be more thrilled with where we landed.

SCIFI VISION:   Now for all of you, but especially for you, Zack, as a director, how different is it working with animation? Because obviously, I mean, you’ve got the voices, but they're the characters are not quite in front of you, in the same way at least.

ZACK SNYDER:  Yeah, it's really interesting. In some ways, it's really kind of immediate, because a lot of it happened during the pandemic, so it was over zoom like this, but so you'd have the script in front of you, and we would talk about the scene, and you would do it. You would do the scene. And what was really interesting was that sort of first blush, kind of credibly fresh version of the scene we would record, where, I think, when you do a live action film, you never get that first kind of raw version. I mean, of course, we can always go back, and we did often go back and rerecord it again and again and again, but often we’d use the very first one, because there's this weird quality that you get from someone really kind of experiencing emotion for the first time. It's really very rare and hard to duplicate in other media. In this an animation, really, you can get at it, and it's kind of incredible, and I think that you really see it in Sylvia and Stuart's performances, because it’s really just raw and connected.

SCIFI VISION:   Does it make it odd though that you can kind of go back, I guess, without the actors to some extent, and change things after the fact? That's got to be different. I mean, it has to be reanimated though, obviously.

ZACK SNYDER:  When the importance is being record, like all that, we really rely on the animators. I mean, we did film them when they were talking so that the animators could always look at what they did in studio with their facial expressions, but if you really rely on the animators to like, you know, furrow the brow or look down or whatever they're going to do, and often, you know, just like I'm collaborating with the actor to get my vision, I'm also collaborating with the animator to kind of enhance one aspect of the performance that maybe on the day the actor kind of was unaware of, but it was really important too. So, yeah, it's an incredible process of collaboration to have this whole group. Each each character has got - all the hands that touch it are incredible. So, yeah, you really really get this kind of - I don't know. It's unlike anything else, as far as, like, how performance is a record.