Sweet Tooth

Sweet Tooth - Netflix and Ground Control craft a ‘Storybook Dystopia’

Sweet Tooth

“Filming in New Zealand gave us a really beautiful and exaggerated landscape that played perfectly into the look we were going for, because unlike many post-apocalyptic stories where everything’s kind of gray and dusty with crumbling buildings, the central idea for Sweet Tooth was that nature was reclaiming everything. We created this idea of “storybook dystopia,”meaning everything had to be lush and green and heightened. The setting was absolutely perfect for the storytelling.”

The pilot for Sweet Tooth was written and shot well before the coronavirus pandemic, but the team suddenly found themselves making a show that felt unexpectedly timely. Executive Producer/Writer/Director/Co-Showrunner Jim Mickle and Executive Producer/Writer/Co-Showrunner Beth Schwartz, and the writers were about two months into writing the season’s scripts in March 2020 when COVID-19 began shutting down parts of the US. The team returned to New Zealand in 2020 to shoot the remainder of the season and adhered to strict COVID-19 safety protocols.

Mickle says of the story’s real-life similarities, “Making television is such a labour and time intensive process, and sometimes when you jump into a story that has big themes and big messages, the world ends up mirroring and echoing the story. Crazily enough, the real world chased so much of what we address in this show — and what the comics addressed more than 10 years ago. Life keeps mirroring art, and vice versa.”

Despite its prescient parallels to the real world, Mickle believes Sweet Tooth will offer the whole family a fun escape. “We want people to come into this world where there’s beauty and hope and adventure. This is a sweeping story — we ride on trains, climb mountaintops, run through forests. This is a show about what makes a family, what home really means, and why it’s important to keep faith in humanity.”