Netflix's upcoming animated film In Your Dreams is a unique dream movie unlike any other. The story follows siblings Stevie (Jolie Hoang-Rappaport) and Elliot (Elias Janssen), who learn of the existence of the Sandman, a mythical being in everyone's dreams who can grant them what their heart desires: the perfect family.
Netflix invited The Direct to an early press day for their upcoming animated film, In Your Dreams. During a deep-dive presentation about creating the movie, VFX Supervisor Nicola Lavender and Production Designer Steve Pilcher discussed some of the key elements of bringing the wonderfully unique world of this story to life, specifically that of Breakfast Town, a town in the characters' dreams where everyone is made of breakfast foods.
In Your Dreams releases on Netflix on November 14, 2025.
Making the Wonderful World of Breakfast Town For 'In Your Dreams'
"If a Child Wanted to Make a Little French Town, What Would They Use?"
As the title for Netflix’s In Your Dreams suggests, good chunks of the movie take place in the dream world. One of the key locations in the movie is Breakfast Town, a place where all the inhabitants are breakfast food.
Steve Pilcher explained that their approach boiled down to a simple question: “If a child wanted to make a little more French town, what would they use?”
Steve Pilcher: There's a ton of ideas and work in here. See the popsicle sticks for the beans and cartons of milk, but they've got a construction paper outside. So, if a child wanted to make a little French town, what would they use? You know, I mean, of course, she probably didn't do something as elaborate as this in her house, but whatever the plating. So all the characters, of course, are alive. These are parameters we set up with it to make it feel believable, even in a dream world.
As the film goes on, Stevie and Elliot must contend with nightmares on their quest to find the Sandman. When those nightmares arrive, they change everything about the dreams the two kids find themselves in.
For breakfast, town Pilcher revealed that they leaned into a moldy look, with VFX Supervisor Nicola Lavender revealing that they built a whole new system to make it all possible:
Steve Pilcher: When it goes bad, we thought, what's the best way to segue this into a darker form that comes... We tried to make it moldy. So we thought, let's have a mold move right across the landscape. So you'll see it sweep across with the storm, with the darkness, and something that's generating that. You have to almost like play in the world, like psychologically, go into the world, to think of all the things you can do with it, and then just continually make it as good as possible.
Nicola Lavender: So, we built a whole system image works here to kind of warp all the geometry and grow mold over the entire set and the characters, so we could kind of transform this world.
At one point, noticing the lack of waffles, one press member in the room asked if the iconic breakfast item had ever been considered for inclusion in the town.
Pilcher revealed that at one point, waffles made up the castle walls—but that ended up being a bridge too far:
Steve Pilcher: There was a time on the boards when they designed all the castle walls like waffles. I said, we can't do that. It's like making houses of people, yeah? So you set up a rule. You basically have parameters. Create better creativity...
When it came to how they populated the town itself, Pilcher revealed that they "decided to use eggs," which proved to be a key to filling out Breakfast town:
Steve Pilcher: How can we really populate this place? So, decided to use eggs. Eggs are a pretty simple form. You could do a variation with the color of it, but populate it really fast. So you'll see a lot of eggs, especially when they're running away.
As shouldn't be apparent at this point, Breakfast Town is filled with details. Living donuts can be seen having their spinkles applied, and fruits are buying vanity tickets from a vendor (like the stickers one might see on them in the grocery store).
Steve Pilcher: He's a French croissant. We really painted a portrait of the avocado, a historical drawing of the avocado. And then we put that on the back of Canvas. On another shot, you might be able to see it if you freeze it. And I put some paint on it, and then we put that on there.
Both Nicola Lavender and Steve Pilcher revealed that outside of Breakfast Town, there is the Broccoli Forest—a play at it being the dreaded green food that kids don't like. While it serves as wonderful set dressing in the final movie, the entire area actually used to be a bigger scene in an earlier version of the story, but was eventually removed.
The brand new trailer for the movie can be seen here:
Netflix animation is on a roll, having just recently released K-Pop Demon Hunters, which is almost certainly going to get a sequel at some point.
