00:00And obviously this project in particular has had quite the gestation, if you like, over the last few years.
00:05Alex, if you wouldn't mind, could you speak about, say, the journey of what Section 31 began as to what it's now become and what that process has been like for you?
00:15Yeah, it's been an incredibly, it's been an incredible ride.
00:19It started as a series and we got fairly far down the road and then COVID hit and shut it down as it shut everything down and kind of changed the schedule of our lives, but also the schedule of the streaming service.
00:38And then Michelle won an Oscar and that changed everything too.
00:42And then a strike happened.
00:43And so there were all these events that happened that kind of ended up determining the course of the film.
00:48What was really wonderful was there was always extreme commitment to tell the story in some form and nobody was more committed than Michelle Yeoh.
00:56And, you know, right after she won the Oscar, which would have been the easiest time for her to run away from this, she doubled down and she was like, I'm going to use what I have now to make sure that it happens, which was an incredible thing.
01:07I mean, it's a testament to how incredible she is.
01:08What was great was that Craig Sweeney, who had been our showrunner and is now the writer of Section 31, had done a lot of work to really think about the world of Section 31.
01:18And it's an interesting world because it's the world outside of Federation space.
01:23You know, that's Section 31's charter.
01:25They can't operate in Federation space.
01:27And so many of the elements that are in the film were elements that had been conceived of for the show.
01:33So in a way, all the work that had been done on the show really contributed to this in a great way.
01:37And because of Michelle's schedule, it made more sense to do it as a film.
01:43And if you're looking at it as a film, I think what excited us so much was the idea of doing a redemption story in the form of a space Western.
01:50You know, you have a character who has these tremendous sins that she's carrying around, that she has to atone for.
01:58And, you know, like all great redemption stories, is resisting her better angels only to ultimately realize that in order to find her redemption, she needs to let them in.
02:09And that's particularly fun for a character like Georgiou because she's so funny and because she's so wry.
02:16And she has an edge to her that makes it un-precious, which was very important to us as well.
02:22So in a way, I feel like we landed on the best version of it, you know, through a confluence of events that were beyond our control.
02:28And, you know, Toonday did an incredible job against very, very challenging circumstances to get this movie made and direct it beautifully.
02:38And the cast that came together was really, really fun.
02:41And I think we're all really proud of how it turned out.
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