"We opted for a lot of CG stuff, but most of it is real penguins," explains Carrey. "I love working with animals. I kind of like to join their energy. Often we'd come in to the set and they wouldn't be there, but we'd hear them off in the distance in their habitat going [honking sound]. They would be interrupting the dialog anyway, so I'd say 'they might as well be here. Bring them on in.' A lot of times we did that.
"I love the dinner scene, which is supposed to be just them sitting in their dinner chairs, pecking fish off the plates," Carrey adds. "But the wranglers [the people who guide the animals through a movie scene] had broom poles separating and holding back the penguins as they are trying to get at the fish. And their heads and they're trying to get at the fish. And it's mayhem, basically, and I just had to stay in it and have fun with it. When stuff like that happens, inside I'm going 'yes, yes …go wild!'"
Director Mark Waters says his challenge was not to tame, but to capture on film the wild menagerie and his whimsical star.
"Working with them just gave you an idea of how much fun they are," Waters says. "So even when we chose to do a CG sequence we knew we had to keep that kind of bubbly energy going and keep a little bit of instability in the shooting of it so it would match with all of the things that were live."
"You're tenacious, Popper, I will give you that. Who is responsible for this?"
Mr. Popper's Penguins features Angela Lansbury as a wealthy New Yorker who Popper is trying to sign for a business deal. She says she turns down many film offers, but had reasons to accept this one.
"I found it very hard to resist the opportunity to work with such an extraordinary group of people, particularly led by the great Jim Carrey, who I've been a fan of for many, many years," explains Lansbury. "I was working in the theater and I had a chance to be in a movie after many, many years and everybody made it a very enjoyable event for me."
Mr. Popper's Penguins is loosely adapted from a Newbury Award-winning children's book by Richard and Florence Atwater that was first published almost 75 years ago. The film is set in New York City and features Manhattan landmarks including the ice rink in Central Park and the circular Guggenheim Museum - which proves irresistible to the irrepressible penguins.