Intention, Ignition, Inwitchification: Inside the New Rules of Magic in Disney's "Hexed"

Every witch in Hexe casts spells a little differently, and that was intentional. At an early press day for Disney's Hexed, the filmmakers behind Walt Disney Animation Studios' 65th animated feature explained the rules of the film's new magic system, how each character's spells got their own look, and the surprises packed into the film's opening sequence.

In the film, 16-year-old Billie Doe (Hailee Steinfeld) learns that her magical abilities have been restrained since childhood and is swept out of suburbia into Hexe, a vast realm of witches, alongside her cautious mother, Alice (Rashida Jones). Magic in Hexe runs on what the film calls the Three I's: Intention, Ignition, and Inwitchification. "If you enter the world of Hexe and you want to do magic, where do you start?" director Fawn Veerasunthorn asked. "We put ourselves in the audience's shoes, as Billie also. The three things involve what you want, but also ignition is part of who you are, and inwitchification is the active role you partake in."

"Everybody's magic will have a different look depending upon your own intention or your personality," director Jason Hand added. "That's the whole idea, is that it can achieve different things." That personalization extends to how magic looks on screen, as with the three-eyed cat sage, Beef Roger Crummchuk (voiced by Walton Goggins). "Beef's magic involves a lot of dusty cat hair instead of pretty pixie dust, and he has a little bit of sparkle that's kind of in his fizzy drinks," Veerasunthorn pointed out. Billie, by contrast, is unrefined with a lot of raw potential. "We want the audience to lean in and be like, 'Well, that's a lot of potential, but that can be kind of a hot mess. Let's see where that goes.'"

Hand pointed to a moment in the trailer where sparks pop off Billie's hands and bounce off her desk. "Going back to that tactile nature of being able to reach out and touch our magic, really feel it, that was really important to us," he said. He credited production designer Lorelay Bové and the color team with giving each character's magic its own hue, and teased more stylized magic to come throughout the film.

The legacy of Walt Disney Animation Studios is rooted in traditional hand-drawn animation. Veerasunthorn noted that effects designer Dan Lund, who comes from that discipline, tested the magic in the 2D medium first. "All the design that we have researched was done initially by hand first just to test out the look of it, and then the CG side comes in," she said.

Hexed opens with a twist on Disney Animation's Steamboat Willie intro, with Mickey transforming into his more magical persona, Sorcerer Mickey. "This is a movie about magic, and Disney has an incredible legacy, with Sorcerer Mickey being a big part of that," Veerasunthorn told me. "So we thought, hey, that would be kind of fun to transition from one era of the steamboat into that. It's a fun wink."

"If you've seen all of our other films from Walt Disney Animation Studios, there's a surprise immediately from the get-go, and that's something we tried to continue for the rest of the film," Hand added about the fun in store for Disney Animation fans. "It's a film about magic and about witches, but there's a lot of surprises within that."

While Hexed isn't a musical, it features several contemporary needle drops. "It is one of the special things about this film, because it feels so modern, and those needle drops help," producer Yvett Merino explained. Those songs began as temp music in the story reels. "As we were going through it, we're like, 'Oh, that really works.' So it's great to include so many songs from our modern current world into this world of Hexed."

Disney's Hexed opens exclusively in theaters on November 25th.