For filmmaker and animator Alex Woo, directing an animated feature film has always been a dream come true. Before co-founding Kuku Studios, Woo helped shape some of modern animation’s most beloved stories, including Pixar’s Finding Dory and Lucasfilm’s The Clone Wars. Now, that dream becomes reality with his directorial debut for Netflix’s In Your Dreams.

The Nerds of Color, along with a select group of journalists, were invited to an early preview of In Your Dreams in Los Angeles, CA. The event featured a sneak peek at the film followed by a press conference, where Woo shared insights into the making of the movie, its emotional core, and the inspiration behind its dreamlike storytelling.

Woo screened two clips, the first of which offered key exposition and introduced audiences to Stevie (Jolie Hoang-Rappaport) and Elliot (Elias Janssen), a pair of siblings determined to save their parents’ crumbling marriage. In the scene, they learn of the legend of the Sandman, a mythical figure said to make dreams come true for anyone who finds them in the dream world. Elliot — who has a flexible relationship with the concept of “stealing” — takes the legend to heart, eagerly sharing his dream of having “a jet pack, a six-pack, and, like, my fists would be made out of actual dynamite.”

His older sister Stevie, less inclined to believe in fantasy, mocks his wild imagination and plays along only to tease him. When Elliot asks about her dream, her answer is simple: her own room. The moment hints at the film’s emotional depth, while giving audiences a clear sense of their sibling dynamic, equal parts teasing and tender.

After reading about the Sandman, Stevie is awoken by Elliot’s bed who starts bucking around like a bronco. Elliot, who is a heavy sleeper, doesn’t notice until Stevie is forced to wake him up. The sentient bed then takes them on a wild ride through town, with many in complete disbelief at what they saw. Stevie wants to go down, to which the bed complies. But when Elliot describes the bed moving at a speed like a rocket, a button labeled “Rocket Mode” suddenly appears on the headboard.

“It would probably be irresponsible for me to push this,” Elliot says with a mischievous grin. And after doing so, they reach the skies where they hear the voice of the Sandman who invites them to find him, and that their dreams will come true if they do.

The second clip shows Stevie entering her own dreams to find the Sandman, so he can make her dreams come true. And she ends up waking up in a recurring dream that she used to have as a kid, called Breakfast Town, which is a town of walking, talking breakfast foods. And it’s sort of like her happy place, because it reminds her of when she was a kid and her family would make breakfast together every morning.

The denizens of Breakfast Town range from walking and talking cereals – one of which wants to claim Stevie as a pet – to a literal sausage dog. There’s also Deliah, a deranged muffin who wears Stevie’s lost retainers as a crown and calls herself a pretty princess, who chases the siblings around town.

While hiding behind a refrigerator to get away from Deliah, Stevie and Elliot come across someone who needs help; it turns out to be Balonely Tony, Elliot’s stuffed giraffe, who can conjure up baloney. Elliot thought he lost it, but it turns out that Stevie had hidden him because he smelled like “a dumpster fire full of bad meat.” Covered in dust bunnies after years of being hidden away, Baloney Tony doesn’t care too much for the locals like Deliah, a deranged muffin.”

With its whimsical visuals, emotional stakes, and deeply personal core, In Your Dreams sets the stage for a heartfelt adventure through the subconscious. Following the exclusive preview screening of these early clips, Woo sat down with press to unpack the creative process behind the film — from developing its surreal dreamscapes to exploring what it means to hold onto hope when dreams don’t come true.

“I think every animation studio has had a dream movie in development at some point over the last couple decades — but none of them ever got made, because no one could figure out how to give a dream movie real stakes,” Woo said about why he wanted In Your Dreams to be his directorial debut. “When we finally cracked it, we knew we had to move fast before someone else did. But for me personally, I grew up on movies that told me if I wished hard enough, my dreams would come true. As I got older, I realized that’s not always the case — and I wanted to make a movie that asks: What do you do when your dreams don’t come true? How do you keep going? How do you find hope?”

Woo drew inspiration from his own relationship with his brother to shape the heart of the Stevie and Elliot’s sibling dynamic. “I’m very much Stevie,” Woo admitted during the press conference. “My brother is very much Elliot — we’ve had epic battles growing up. I was the perfectionist, overbearing older sibling; he was the carefree, fun-loving, charming little brother. A lot of this movie was me trying to understand and appreciate him and his unique perspective on life.”

“This movie is just a really circuitous way of me telling my brother I love him. I guess making movies is easier than dealing with your feelings,” Woo joked.

Woo has long admired Robinson for his comedic genius and was thrilled when he agreed to join In Your Dreams as Baloney Tony. “He just brought so much energy to that character. We improv so many of your lines,” he said to Robinson. “He brought a lot of just comedy that we couldn’t come up with ourselves.”

Simu Liu, who plays Stevie and Elliot’s father, was cast even before Shang-Chi premiered, thanks to a friend’s recommendation. This friend described Liu to Woo as charming and charismatic. “I was immediately charmed by his charisma and good looks,” Woo shared. “What really hooked him was that his character is a struggling musician who sings in the film — and Simu loves to sing, so he was all in.”

“I think what really hooked him is that his character is a musician, and he’s sort of the struggling musician,” Woo adds. “But he sings a song in the film, and Simu loves singing. And he’s actually a very good singer. And so I told him, ‘It’s not a musical, but you’re gonna be able to sing in this film.’ And he was like, ‘Oh, yeah. Sign me up.'”

As for Cristin, Woo’s admiration goes way back to their early days working on The Venture Brothers. “I saw her voice in so many characters on that show and wondered, ‘Who is this woman?’ She’s been on my dream list of collaborators ever since,” Woo said. Her character in the film is also a musician — the lead singer in their family band — making her a perfect fit.

Robinson then spoke about how he related to his character, Baloney Tony, although he couldn’t quite explain why. That said, he also drew upon his own relationship with his brother and sister to give life to his character. “It is a love letter to our brothers and sisters, you know, because I have a younger brother and an older sister,” he said. “My brother and I are, we’re relentless in teasing our sister with all love and fun.”

Robinson then shared how playful their text exchanges can get, joking that if one of them misspells a word, “it’s over,” and one of them says, “I never heard that word before.”

For Robinson, finding the voice of Baloney Tony was all about channeling both family and collaboration. “A stuffed animal who’s been stuck behind the refrigerator going crazy probably and having to talk himself out and be like ‘Look, I’m just a stuffed animal. It doesn’t even matter. You know? ‘ A lot was happening in the moment, man. We were finding out, you know, who he is and, how to put him together.”

While the emotional core of In Your Dreams was rooted in Woo’s personal experiences, it was the Sandman myth — and a creative twist on its folklore — that ultimately unlocked the film’s story structure and gave its dreamworld real stakes.

It [the Sandman lore] helped us crack the movie, to be honest,” Woo said. The Sandman is a Scandinavian folklore about how or why kids have dreams when they sleep. So the mythology is that when you go to sleep, the Sandman comes over you, sprinkles sand over your eyes, and you wake up with those little crusties in the morning. But that’s how you get dreams.”

So Woo wanted to expand upon that by having Stevie and Elliot embark on a quest to find the Sandman, who would then make their dreams come true. “You can have something in the dream world affect the real world, and that’s how we connected those two realities and then gave the film stakes, so it was a great plot device,” he explained. “That’s what really drew me to the Sandman. Also, one of my favorite movies in the world is Back to the Future. And that song, by the Chordettes, is used in that movie. And so there’s sort of like a secret, you know, homage to that film for me, with the Sandman and that song.”

Rooted in folklore and driven by deeply personal themes, In Your Dreams is an original story that blends surreal fantasy with emotional realism. That is something that can be a tough sell in today’s risk-averse industry. But Woo doesn’t believe that his film being an original was what made it difficult to greenlight. He believes it was the subject matter.

It’s such a bold statement, and it’s really showing leadership in the industry because you’re right, a lot of studios are just doing so many IPs, plays, sequels, video games, and adaptations,” Woo said about the current state of creativity in the industry. “Those things are great. But, yeah, it’s nice to have an original story every now and then. I don’t think the fact that it was original was what made it difficult. I think it was the fact that it was a movie about dreams that dealt with some challenging subject matter.”

“Credit to Netflix,” Woo added. “I think they saw how powerful the story was gonna be, and they really believed in it. So, they got behind it in a very big way. So yeah. I’m so honored and grateful to them.”

While getting the green light was a dream come true for Woo, the director says that his film won’t be all pleasant dreams. “There are definitely nightmares in the movie. I mean that, you know, the naked dream is kind of a nightmare,” he said. “So, yeah, we definitely have nightmares. There’s a big role that nightmares play in the film. I’m not gonna give too much away, but, yeah, it’s, it’s an integral part of the film. So that’s all I that’s all I say.”

The team’s approach to dreams wasn’t just rooted in fantasy — it also drew from the mysterious, often unexplainable nature of dreaming itself. For Woo, the ambiguity around why we dream opened up a world of creative possibilities. “There are so many different interpretations of dreams across different cultures. I mean, it’s because we still don’t know why we have dreams or really what they’re for,” Woo said. “We’ve been able to take a sort of scientific approach to dreams, but even that scientific approach has left us with a lot more questions than answers. So it was such fertile ground for making a film, especially a family film, because you can create some mythology around dreams, and not have scientists go, you know, fact-checking everything.”

“I hope that people around the world see this film and find it very relatable,” Woo continued. “Because I don’t think we take a specific cultural approach to what dreams mean and why they’re there.”

When asked if there were other Nordic elements beyond the Sandman’s origins, Woo shared that the mythical figure’s design actually borrows from another familiar folkloric icon.

“You didn’t see the design of the Sandman, but he looks a little like Santa Claus,” Woo explained. “And that was really deliberate because our perception of Santa Claus is that he’s sort of like a giver of gifts, right? Kids write him wish lists, and he makes dreams come true in that way. So we felt like there was a lot of overlap there.”

As for where he draws his storytelling inspiration, Woo said it always begins from within: “I always start from a personal place — something I’ve experienced or felt deeply — and then look for a world, or a plot, that could pair well with that emotional truth.”

Directed by Woo, with Eric Benson serving as co-director, and using a script written by Benson and Woo, In Your Dreams streams on Netflix this fall.