The Real Reason The Sea Beast's Chris Williams Left Disney For Netflix

Netflix has a fantastic new animated movie for the whole family to enjoy. "The Sea Beast" takes place in a world where sea monsters run rampant, and it's up to a group of distinguished monster hunters to take them all down to keep society safe. On an important expedition to kill the Red Bluster, Jacob Holland (Karl Urban) discovers that a young girl, Maisie Brumble (Zaris-Angel Hator), has stowed away. Together, they'll go on an epic adventure to discover the truth behind the sea monsters and attempt to find a way to bring peace to their world once more. 

It's a phenomenal film that's earned rave reviews across the board. Undoubtedly, a big part of that quality is thanks to the inclusion of Chris Williams as a director. Williams worked as a story artist on several Disney films before making his way as a director on the likes of "Big Hero 6" and "Moana." In fact, "The Sea Beast" marks Williams' first feature-length directorial effort outside of Disney's umbrella. 

So what made Williams decide to jump ship (no pun intended) and make a movie for Netflix instead of Disney? Here's what the director told Collider. 

Williams spoke at length about his desire to make a movie like the great adventure flicks of old, like "Raiders of the Lost Ark" and "King Kong." Those were the kind of films that made him fall in love with storytelling in the first place, and he wanted to bring something to that canon that he felt would be better off outside of Disney's wheelhouse. As he put it, "There was a genre that I really wanted to take on that was just a little bit outside of what Disney would do. And this itch that I wanted to scratch really coincided with a moment in my life where I was kind of taking stock, because I had been at Disney for almost 25 years and that was half my life at that point."

Williams goes on to describe his tenure at Disney and how he felt it was finally time to branch out a little bit. This coincided with a desire to make himself, as he put it, uncomfortable. "I just found myself, I found this compulsion as an artist: I wanted to make myself uncomfortable," he stated. "I was very comfortable and treated very well at Disney, but I wanted change for its own sake." And that's part of where the excitement at working at Netflix came in. Netflix was a new institution while Disney had firm roots. 

The results speak for themselves. "The Sea Beast" has earned a critics' rating of 95% on Rotten Tomatoes, with Bilge Ebiri of Vulture writing, "The world of 'The Sea Beast' is so realistically rendered, so detailed and physical, that much of the time it feels like a live-action adventure. It's so thoroughly immersive it might make you believe in sea monsters." When it comes to making his own action-adventure movie, it's safe to say Williams has succeeded and then some.