D&M Find the Town Which Served as Inspiration for the Land of Sweets in Disney's The Nutcracker and the Four Realms

Disney's The Nutcracker and the Four Realms movie to be released this fall is based on Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Ballet, itself based on an 1816 E.T.A. Hoffmann story. The screen adaptation centers on Clara’s adventures in an ornate palace and the fanciful lands that surround it. Producer Mark Gordon told Entertainment Weekly that "bringing the experience of the ballet to a wider audience was very much a part of why he and Disney wanted to tell the story on movie screens." You can read the full EW article HERE, and excerpts below,

Four Realms blows things up to an eye-popping scale. “We did our own version of some of the different visuals that one has seen over the years in some of the classic ballet versions,” says Gordon, while production designer Guy Hendrix Dyas adds, “It was vitally important to try my hardest to fulfill everybody’s vision of what this world would be like if they really saw it outside of a ballet stage setting.”

The Castle: At the center of the movie is the palace, where the regents of all the realms convene. The castle set, which star Mackenzie Foy (Clara) calls “insane,” boasts a working portcullis and floor-to-ceiling tapestries.

“There’s a strong Russian historical context to The Nutcracker, so it was a very natural aesthetic to start studying architecturally. The key to making the palace feel fantastical was to take the Russian historical architecture and add elements like highly saturated colors. “You’re not really sure, looking at some of these buildings, whether they are real palaces or toys in the imagination of a child,” Dyas says.

In the middle of the palace is the throne room, with four corners looking north, south, east, and west, to each of the different realms.

The Land of Snowflakes: For this realm of politicians, ice producers, and miners, Dyas took inspiration from a famous Swedish ice hotel and 16th-century German villages, transforming that architecture into layers of ice.

The Land of Flowers: In this agricultural home to farmers and beekeepers, Dyas turned to Dutch windmills and villages in the south of England to design his floral masterpieces.

The Fourth Realm: Previously known as the Land of Amusements and ruled over by Mother Ginger (Helen Mirren), the Fourth Realm is now a mysterious place, which the creative team will only describe as “creepy.”

The Land of Sweets: Inspired by the character of the Sugar Plum Fairy (played by Keira Knightley), this land was built from real candy. “They had to put signs that said, ‘Don’t eat the candy,’

Now, Robert, a faithful D&M reader from Munich, sent me this morning this note with the pictures below, saying: "I guess I know where the animator got his influence for one of the kingdoms. It’s the city of Rothenburg ob der Tauber. A wonderful and charming city some kilometers north of my home town. The whole city is kept in a historic setting."

The first picture below is from the film production, and have a look at the two next pictures showing the city of Rothenburg ob der Tauber in Germany. I think the pictures speak by themselves and its seems pretty obvious that it was used as inspiration for the land of sweets, which is no problem. Of course they added a Russian and sweets theming all over it.

Disney's The Nutcracker and the Four Realms will be released in theaters on November 2. In the meantime watch the latest trailer below.




Pictures: copyright Disney