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
00:11it'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.
00:20It started as a series and we got fairly far down the road and then COVID hit and shut it
00:28down as it shut everything down and kind of changed the schedule of our lives, but also the schedule of
00:36the streaming service.
00:38And then Michelle won an Oscar and that changed everything too.
00:41And 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
00:54more 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
01:00away from this, she doubled down and she was like, I'm going to use what I have now to make
01:04sure 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,
01:14had 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
01:33show.
01:33So in a way, all the work that had been done on the show really contributed to this in a
01:37great 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
01:46doing 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
01:57for.
01:58And, you know, like all great redemption stories, is resisting her better angels only to ultimately realize that in order
02:06to find her redemption, she needs to let them in.
02:09And that's particularly fun for a character like Giorgio, 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
02:26of events that were beyond our control.
02:29And, you know, Toonday did an incredible job against very, very challenging circumstances to get this movie made and direct
02:37it 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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