Growing up, Chris Williams loved adventure movies, and among his favorites was King Kong. “The idea of the uncharted island, the mysteries beyond the horizon, was so compelling to me, and then there’s meeting this fierce beast that was so huge in scale and so formidable,” he says. “Yet over the course of the story, you form a real connection and empathy toward the creature. That, to me, was just an incredible feat of storytelling.”

Williams, an Oscar winner for Disney’s Big Hero Six, also recalls seeing old maps of the sea: “The mapmakers would populate the ocean with these really fantastic sea creatures.” This was the spark that would become The Sea Beast, in 2018 among the first original animated features to be greenlit by Netflix Animation.

The entertaining and inspiring adventure is set in a rich maritime world based on the 1700s, except sea monsters are real.