Guillermo del Toro has spent his filmmaking career finding sympathy for monsters. His best-known stories balance compassion and edge. He won the Oscar for Best Picture for The Shape of Water, an aching if gory ballad of an aquatic creature falling in love with a human; his superhero movies focus on fringe characters such as Blade (half-man, half-vampire) and the demonic Hellboy, both outcasts operating in society's shadows.
To create Apple TV's new branding, a team from the global agency TBWA\Media Arts Lab (MAL) gathered in a studio with a blacked-out stage, a giant glass version of the Apple TV logo, and a bevy of colorful studio lights. Using just practical effects, they created a new animated logo for the brand that will roll out at the beginning of Apple TV's shows and films, on its app, and in marketing campaigns over the coming months.
Netflix seems to agree, because ahead of its next big movie franchise launching next year, the streamer has sourced a practical effects icon to help create the many creatures involved. According to , Greta Gerwig's upcoming Chronicles of Narniamovie has recruited creature effects artist Neal Scanlan to help with "animatronics, puppetry, and prosthetics." Scalan is a longtime SFX industry veteran, but he's perhaps best known for his work within the Star Wars franchise.
The Italian-produced, Utah-shot, so-bad-it's-good hall of famer is less about goblins (not a single troll, and especially not the one from 1986's Troll, appears in the film) and more about icky food dyed in sickly green colors. In the film, these gross foodstuffs are the poisoned creation of a witch and her flock of vegetarian goblins to trap innocent humans and turn them into plants, and only young Joshua Waits (Michael Stephenson) knows of its danger when his family arrives in the rural town Nilbog for a house-swap vacation.