About The Production From Page to Screen: The Lorax Returns

“ Plant a new Truffula. Treat it with care. Give it clean water. And feed it fresh air. Grow a forest. Protect it from axes that hack. Then the Lorax and all of his friends may come back.” —The Once-ler in “The Lorax”

The relationship Meledandri built with Audrey Geisel on Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who! led to the decision to make Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax. Meledandri gives some background: “The genesis of the decision to do The Lorax as the follow-up to Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who! actually came from Audrey Geisel. We had talked about wanting to do another film together, and she came to me and said: ‘This is the one that I want to do.’ She explained that it had been Ted Geisel’s favorite book, and it had been dedicated to her. She felt this underlying love for the book, as well as a relevance to what the story was about.”

The filmmaker gave great thought to the weight and seriousness of adapting a book with such an important legacy and message. He explains: “I sat with the book for quite some time and shared it with my partners at Illumination. With every Seuss property, it is imperative to find a way to tell the story in a way that honors the underlying work he created. It took us about six months to determine whether or not we could successfully do that.”

Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax is the fourth film that Meledandri has crafted with screenwriters/executive producers Cinco Paul and Ken Daurio. The writing duo had worked with him on Universal’s Despicable Me and Hop, but their first project with Meledandri was Fox’s Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who!. They had a familiarity and understanding of the world of Seuss and how to successfully translate it to the big screen.

While the responsibility of honoring such a talented artist is vast, so was the opportunity to create a colorful and imaginative filmic world. Meledandri says: “Dr. Seuss had one of the richest imaginations of anybody living and working in the 20th century. His worlds have a sense of whimsy and playfulness, and his characters are immediately appealing. He wrote these delightful stories, but inside them are ideas and themes that are absolutely timeless.”

Back on board for another Illumination production was Despicable Me’s blockbuster director, Oscar® nominee Chris Renaud. When asked about the influence of Dr. Seuss in his life, Renaud responds: “He has been part of my life since I was a child, and his stories, especially ‘The Lorax,’ are ones that that I’ve passed on to my own kids. He teaches us to be aware of a world that is bigger than ourselves and that each individual can make a difference. That’s something that sticks with you. If we retain these lessons as children, you carry them through your life.”

“The Lorax” is a beloved and established property that serves as a touchstone for many young readers. To craft a feature production that would draw audiences further into its story, the team would need to flesh out the book’s characters and create a complementary world. They didn’t set out to rewrite the story, rather to fill in what happened before the book began and after it ended.

Filling in these gaps was no small challenge. Reflects the director: “You want to stay true to the material and honor it, but you must expand it and make it into something that works in a 90-minute movie, something very different from a children’s book. You have to decide how to not only take these iconic images and words and turn them into a movie, but how to expand that book’s world.” Fortunately, Seuss had given them the ideal jumping off point. “When the Once-ler throws the seed to Ted, it seemed like a perfect place to expand and figure out what that part of the world would be like…in addition to telling the book’s tale of the Lorax and the Once-ler in the past.”

Because “The Lorax” is so cherished, attention to detail for this adaptation was paramount. Shares Renaud: “We know what the Lorax looks like. We have to adapt him to make him a three-dimensional character, but we had the basic structure, and we’ve expanded upon that.” For additional delineation, the director took Daurio and Paul’s imagined world of Thneedville and found visual inspiration from the minutest of details of the town that were shown in the book. He says, “There’s a little drawing of Ted’s town in the corner of the first page of the book. We used this as our inspiration for Thneedville.”


The Once-ler and the Lorax are surrounded by Bar-ba-loots in Truffula Valley.


You may hear the signature sound of Truffula Valley’s own Humming-Fish from miles away.

Source: The Lorax Movie | Official Site for the The Lorax Film