Director Says Netflix’s ‘In Your Dreams’ Could Have Ended Differently

Netflix’s animated feature, In Your Dreams, dropped on Netflix this past Friday, which centers on a 12-year-old girl, Stevie (Jolie Hoang-Rappaport), and her quest to keep her parents (Cristin Milioti and Simu Liu) together. She is desperate to do anything to remind them of their perfect family, which she believes existed before her little brother, Elliott (Elias Janssen), was born. Stevie and Elliott stumble upon a mysterious, magical book about the Sandman (Omid Djalili), granting people their dreams to come true. Determined to make her parents’ dream of being reunited as a happy family come true, she and her brother embark on a quest to find the Sandman, who can grant this wish.

After some twists and turns, Stevie is rescued by Elliott and their parents from being stuck in her dreams and returns to reality. She realizes that she can’t control what happens to her parents, but is reminded that no matter what happens, they’ll always be a family.

In the film’s final moments, her mother takes a lucrative job out of town, a move her father opposes but ultimately makes to see if they can work as a family. Things are still uncertain between the parents. Stevie says in a voiceover, they’re still “figuring things out, and that’s OK.” As the family drives away in the moving truck, the back opens, spilling some of their contents. She continues, “It turns out my dreams were trying to tell me something. Life isn’t perfect, and neither are we. But no matter how it changes, we’ll always have each other.”

Director Alex Woo tried different versions of the ending – one where the parents did separate and one where they reconciled as a happy family – but they never felt right.

“We definitely tried both versions,” Woo says over Zoom from his press tour in Los Angeles. “The one when they separated at the end was different, and innovative in the storytelling and narratively, but there was such a disappointment [from the audience].

The same situation occurred when they kept the parents together, because, although it was optimistic, it didn’t feel genuine – and somewhat forced. He wanted to leave it open-ended, much like his own family story, which inspired this film.

When Woo was a child, his mother left the family for a short time but eventually returned. She has dreams of becoming an actress, but gave it up when she became a mother of two boys. He recalls that after both he and his brother left for college, their mother, then in her mid-40s, left their father again. This time, she flew to Los Angeles to pursue acting, but found it difficult to break into the industry (especially during the 90s). She then returned home to Hong Kong.

While the film was in production, Woo found himself yet again mediating between his parents when his mother wanted to leave again. He went back to Hong Kong, which helped as his parents worked it out again.

“My whole life, I didn’t know whether or not my parents were going to be together or apart,” he admits. “I realized, it doesn’t matter. What mattered was that my mother would always be my mother. My father was always going to be my father. They’re going to love each other in their own way. So, regardless of whether there are labels there – officially together or apart, we’ll always be a family.”

He reflected on these things when creating the relationship between the parents and the family dynamics. The box that the parents carried together into the moving truck had the words “FRAGILE” on it, serving as a metaphor for their marriage. Though they may not be on the same page, they’re trying to make it work out of love and respect, carrying this box together into the truck. As they drive off in separate cars – Dad and Elliott in the moving truck, Mom and Stevie in the family car – everything seems like it’s going to be okay. He and his team were happy with the ending because it captured the nuance and complexity of what they think life is like.

“They’re driving off into the horizon,” Woo explains. “Then the back of the truck opens up, and all the things fall out – that’s just the way life goes. It’s just always messy, and it never really quite goes the way you want it. But it doesn’t matter because that’s what life is all about, you get through the mess together.”

The same could be said about his decision to have Steve and Elliott have a sister-and-brother dynamic. Though the story was inspired by his own, which he and his brother shared through their family’s separations, Woo had always envisioned Stevie as the older sister to a baby brother, because eldest daughters often face more pressure than most siblings.

“A big theme in this movie is perfectionism,” Woo says. “That’s Steve’s flaw – she wants everything in life to be perfect. I think young girls face a lot of pressure to be perfect and to look perfect. I thought it would be much more relevant and just made sense with our thematics to be a 12-year-old girl. They mature a lot faster than boys.”

Contrasting Stevie’s perfectionist behaviors, Elliott is stereotypically the gross, youngest 8-year-old boy, who has no sense of hygiene or care in the world other than having fun. He’s energetic and is oblivious to everything. It really highlights the responsibilities and burden that Stevie has to carry.

“I wanted our main character to feel like she was an old soul and carrying the weight of the family on her shoulders,” says Woo. “Girls tend to do that more than boys.”

Woo shared a fun fact about the siblings, which was first revealed on the pizza box where he and his Studio Kuku partners, Stanley Moore and Tim Hahn, drew out the plot to In Your Dreams. It was noted that Stevie and Elliott had different names: Margot and Ellis, respectively.

They had to change Ellis to Elliott after Moore’s wife wanted to use the name Ellis for their child. So, they chose Elliott after the main character from Steven Spielberg’s 1982 classic, E.T.

Woo laughs, “We both love Elliott and E.T.“

Margot’s name changed to Stevie after Stevie Nicks of Fleetwood Mac. They initially wanted to include Fleetwood Mac’s Dreams into the movie, but due to a viral meme moment that overused the song at the time, they couldn’t.

He shares, “We couldn’t use the song, but we wanted to find some way to give homage to Stevie Nicks, so we named [the main character] after her.”

In Your Dreams is directed by Woo and co-directed by Erik Benson from a script by Woo and Benson and a story by Woo, Benson, and Stanley Moore. In Your Dreams is streaming now on Netflix.