Mane man: Sing 2's director on turning Bono into Clay Calloway the singing lion (2025)

“We had some designs for the character and an outline of the character but we didn’t expect to hear anything,” says Jennings of the rock star who was top of his wish list for Sing 2. “Or if we did, it would just be a very polite, ‘we’re very grateful for your interest, but I'm afraid Bono's very busy with 10 billion things right now’.”

Instead, the British writer/director of both Sing films got a message that Bono would ring him shortly. “It was the most enthusiastic, energising 45 minutes you could hope to have with anyone, let alone someone who you'd like to play a part in your film,” he remembers.

“He’d so enjoyed the first film because of all the music. I remember him saying: ‘You were happy to go from Frank Sinatra to Taylor Swift. It doesn't bother you where these things are from. It's just that you love music’.”

The story of his character - a lion named Clay Calloway who no longer sings as he’s mourning the death of his wife - also resonated with Bono, according to the director.

“He talked a lot about grief, and the part it's played in his life, and how, in his case, it's where his voice sort of came from, though in the case of this character, it’s the reason he's lost his ability to sing. He just doesn't have the reason to sing anymore. It's gone from him. He talked a lot about what music meant.”

Following initial test recordings at his home in Dublin, Jennings and Bono recorded further scenes at a studio near the singer’s home in the South of France.

The star even penned a new tune, Your Song Saved My Life, which features in the film’s closing credits. A number of U2 songs also feature through the storyline.

“It wasn't just his voice because it is a remarkable, unique voice. But also those songs that would be intrinsic, that would be part of the fabric of that character's story, they would be part of that emotional journey to the end. It's not only the voice it's this legacy, and it would be perfect to put them together.”

The first Sing movie - set in a world of animated animal characters - told the story of a struggling theatre owner who holds a singing competition to save his theatre. It was a bona fide smash, grossing over $634 million worldwide from a production that cost $75 million.

Though he hadn’t worked in animation before, Jennings proved to be an inspired choice. He had a long history of directing music videos, while his much-admired film Son of Rambow put him on the radar of Chris Meledandri of Illumination, the studio behind Despicable Me and Minions.

“He'd had an idea that he was interested in making into a film, which was involving animals and a singing competition and character stories. He invited me to meet him for a cup of tea because he liked a film I'd made called Son of Rambow. I don't know how he thought this bloke from England might be good to write an animals singing musical thing.”

Though he had always wanted to make feature films, Jennings had a highly successful career directing music videos for acts like Supergrass, REM and Fatboy Slim.

“Even when we were making music videos, they were like my little short films. The ones that really worked were the ones that I really treated like labours of love. It's all that work of finding that lovely marriage between picture and music, trying to get something that captures the music and the song so that they feel like you can't separate them, that they just work. When you can get that marriage working it's the best.

“It was something that I worked a lot on with my team at Hammer & Tongs before we started making films, and it's something that I definitely feel is very present in the process of making the Sing movies.

“You've got to have every single shot feel just perfectly timed, every camera movement or static camera. Every choice is trying to help you really engage with that emotionally and so even if you're five years old and have never heard this song before, you still hopefully will feel everything you're supposed to feel. It's not just a song playing on a screen.”

• Sing 2 is in cinemas from Friday, January 28

Behind the scenes: Four years and more than 500 people

Animated films can take years of painstaking work and hundreds of crew to bring their magic and wizardry to the screen.

Sing 2 took four and a half years to make from the initial pre-production stages, with over 500 people working on the project.

Originally hired as a writer, Jennings fell in love with the first movie at the draft stage and was invited to direct both films.

“There is something adorable about playing with animals and using them as human caricatures. It allows you to do stuff that you wouldn't be able to do with people. I like that illustrative quality, it sort of relaxes you. They're lovely, fluffy, vibrant colours. And just it's a world that you can inhabit and want to crawl into.”

He’s loved every moment, but agrees it’s the most intense work he’s ever done. Animation involves a painstaking amount of work and detail.

“It depends what's in the shot, but on average, you can expect each animator to generate two seconds of animation per week. But this is the thing - that’s just one character,” he says, adding that if other characters feature in the scene that time is multiplied.

“Another department will do all the animation of the cloth, the material and the clothes. Then another department will do all the fur and the hair and the wind. It's not just one person who's going to spend a week doing two seconds.

“Then somebody else goes through this amazing array of talented artists in all these different fields. So when you see a final shot, you are seeing, even if it's the simplest shot, just some water or something like that, you are seeing the work of hundreds of people over years, finally come together.

"If you're in my position, and you're every day reviewing and approving shots, it's very moving, you're seeing the sum of a massive amount of work.”