Bob Belcher and family talk us through The Bob's Burgers Movie

The Bob's Burgers movie is now on the big screen and it is an animated delight. It's that rare cinematic cartoon adaptation that manages to offer up a ton of Easter eggs to keep hardcore fans happy, while being accessible for everyone else.

This is no mean feat, given the show is now into its 12th season, some 200 episodes and over 10 years has passed since it made its debut.

"I think there's a very low barrier to entry in terms of understanding the movie," said Dan Mintz who voices Tina to ShortList, when we caught up with him.

"If you don't know what a restaurant is, maybe you'll have a little trouble following along but that's it. Then the cool thing is if you've never seen it before you now have like 1000 episodes to go home and watch when you're done."

He's right, but before you do that here's the cast and crew of Bob's Burgers explaining all about the movie...

There's a very good reason why we're getting a Bob's Burgers movie now

Loren Bouchard, creator of Bob's Burgers: "The first people who ever asked us about making a movie were the fans, and that was pretty early on. We got pretty shy around that question because we could barely figure out how to make the show and you want us to make a movie. So we avoided answering that question for for quite a few seasons.

"But then when the studio asked us to do one it was a little little bit later in the game, and we had done some work on ourselves. We had figured out how to make the show big when we want it to feel big. We've done a couple two parter episodes and a Christmas Special. We've really also started getting bigger shoulders in our musical arrangements and make them feel big. So we decided we had those tools and we were ready to fool around with them."

The animation cinematic was key - and Ireland helped make that happen

Bernard Derriman, animator and director of The Bob's Burger's movie: "One of the things I was so worried about at the start was how do we how do we get that feature quality animation and our you know the production side of they found some great studios a lion's share of the animation was done at Lighthouse Studios in Kilkenny Ireland and they are just really talented animators. It was a it was awesome for Loren [Bouchard] and I to see this animation coming back.

"On the show, we've got some studios in South Korea and they're just pumping out, you know, 22 episodes a year. That's a huge volume of animation, so you don't get the opportunity to really get in and finesse as much as we would love and that was the beauty of this movie."

Making the movie accessible to non fans was essential

Nora Smith, showrunner and writer of The Bob's Burgers Movie: "We definitely had that in mind the whole time. We love and very much appreciate our fans and like maybe love them too much and we want them to love us a lot. So we wanted to make them happy because they deserve it like they really have put in the work and they've been there for us.

"But we also knew that we wanted to bring in people that could just say, 'oh, this is just actually a movie, I don't feel like I'm watching along to a TV show'.

"I feel like this is a movie in its own right with big action pieces and music and this big story of mystery that we never thought we could tell on the show because it felt too big. So we just tried to make a movie that we wanted to see.|

Having the The Bob's Burgers Movie as a murder-mystery comedy was always the plan

Loren Bouchard: "We we knew that would get us going in the right direction. We we also knew that it couldn't just be that, you know, we didn't want to make a genre movie. We wanted to borrow from a few genres that were going to give us the scale that we were looking for.

"So the other thing we had to do, even though we had music, even though we had a mystery, is we had to service those characters and really give the characters our attention and make sure this wasn't just a big chase disguised as a movie. Those movies can be fun, but it's so much more satisfying when it's when it's really about something inside the character and in our case inside all of the characters.

"So we gave them each their own little crisis that they were going to have to solve so even though it brings you right back to where you started it and even though we're going to keep making the TV show, we wanted you to feel like these characters were forever changed."

The voice of Bob Belcher wasn't expecting a movie to be made

H. Jon Benjamin, voice of Bob Belcher: "I certainly wasn't expecting it. When you are involved in television show you're kind of working on the assumption that you might not even get another season.

"But when you started to see the show building an audience and getting more and more fans. I think people started asking when we're gonna make a movie. For us in the cast, though, we are at the at the whim of the people who are doing the bulk of the work, which is the writing and the production teams. That's a big responsibility to make a movie so I'm just pleased that they found the time to do it."

The Bob's Burgers musical moments have vastly improved over the years

Larry Murphy, voice of Linda Belcher: "The music has really advanced. During the first couple seasons, we were improvising and it was a little more 'rinky dink' but it's become very big and, you know, we have these amazing musical teams and writers and so it was it's a joy to kind of push and see if Linda can really sing - trying to actually make it more kind of Broadway and big and sound good and professional.

"Season one was like 'diarrhoea, diarrhoea, down the gutter with a piece of bread' and now like season 12 was like a full orchestration.

"I love that challenge and be able to you know, sing all these these fun songs. Because we've had so much success with the albums on Sub Pop and people really love the music side of the show. I love it too. I make music as well, so it's it's a no brainer for me."

Tina and Jean Belcher have changed as characters

Dan Mintz, the voice of Tina Belcher: "Tina, has definitely evolved as a character. I think she got fully formed after a season or two.

"At first she seemed a a lot more monotone, not really having an emotion and just being being a person that would say like weird things. Then they started to give give her real personality levels which was very rewarding as a voice actor."

Eugene Mirman, the voice of Jean Belcher: "Jean has became a little more exuberant. Over time, he became more enthusiastic and kind of love what he loved and was a little impassioned and odd - he had his quirks. With each season the year repeats, but the character information sort of remains. So you learn more and more and they become just richer characters from just the amount of information you can have about them."

The Bob's Burgers movie is out in cinemas now.

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