Created by Loren Bouchard, Bob's Burgers has spent over 12 years on the air, engrossing and entertaining audiences with the bizarre but loveable Belcher family. Since then, the show has become a huge fan favorite, a sweet-natured inheritor to the kind of fandom that The Simpsons garnered. Now, the Belchers are heading to the big screen in The Bob's Burgers Movie, with Bouchard on hand to write and direct the film alongside longtime collaborators Nora Smith and Bernard Derriman. Focusing on a sinkhole that threatens to derail not just the Belcher's happy summer but their entire family business, the film is a natural evolution of the absurd but adorable television show.
During an exclusive interview with CBR ahead of the film's premiere on May 27, The Bob's Burgers Movie directors Loren Bouchard and Bernard Derriman spoke about bringing the Belchers to movie theaters. The pair also recalled how music and spectacle were always at the heart of the upcoming film.
CBR: First off, congratulations on the film! Did you ever expect to see the Belchers take the big screen?
Loren Bouchard: I mean, we didn't even expect to get to Season 2 in the beginning. We came into this with carefully managed expectations because doing this is hard, and not every show gets to live past two or three seasons. We take nothing for granted. We were just talking about that. Take nothing for granted. We expected only that if we got an opportunity, we would give it everything we had, and so here we are.
Bernard Derriman: That's true. Yeah. I mean, it wasn't anything on our minds when the opportunity came. I hadn't been thinking about it for a long time. So it sort of came out nowhere, at least for me, anyway. It was like, we're doing a movie, and I was thrilled.
You've been with these characters for so long, you've gotten to really flesh them out in so many ways that, like you said, a lot of shows don't get the opportunity to. Which of the Belchers would you say has surprised you the most over the years?
Bouchard: That's interesting. All of us behind the scenes and the actors in the cast, I think, have an innate sense of that the show is going to grow and change, but that we also don't want to do that purposely. It has to happen like a house plant that just kind of grows a little bigger than you expect it. I don't want to single anyone out, but I would say they all have a handle on that. We're going to keep making this show, and we're all going to be the same people but different because people change. They grow older, and their kids grow older, so we can't help but change, and they can't help but grow a little. If you try for it, I think it's got a whiff of pushing, so you have to just hope that it happens organically.
Derriman: I think a lot of it... We start off with care, especially with kids from school. So many of our regulars started off with just a little appearance. We love working with that actor, and then we'll just build, and then they'll end up being in more and more episodes. Then it gets bigger and bigger, and their character develops. So that's a sort of you like Lauren [was] saying, it's very organic. We don't really set out to weed in a new wild character... They always seem to start small and build up.
Music is such a big part of the series, and the film is going to have that throughline as well. Was there a version of the movie that ever existed that wasn't also a musical?
Bouchard: No, it was always going to have music. We were rehearsing... We did a live show for two nights in LA that had a lot of music. We did a little bit of standup comedy from the cast. Then we had a horn section and backup singers and images on the screen and 15-foot tall puppets. It was during the rehearsal for that show when they called and asked if we wanted to do the movie. It was because we were starting to think about that. It's not just about music. It's about spectacle. Music is just one trick, you know, but there's a few of them. I think that's what gave us this little bit of confidence. I will say, the other part is confetti. Confetti just makes everything seem big.
The Bob's Burgers Movie comes to theaters May 27.