Peanuts: A Summer Musical Creators Take the Characters to Melodic Heights

The Peanuts franchise’s fruitful streaming home on Apple TV+ continues into previously undiscovered country with the latest special, Snoopy Presents: A Summer Musical. As the title suggests, the special is a bonafide musical as the Peanuts gang visits their beloved summer camp, with fan-favorite musician and songwriter Ben Folds serving as the music director and contributing three songs to the special. And as with all memorable Peanuts, this particular tale came from personal places from its core creative team as they developed both the narrative and music for the gang’s time at camp.

The creative team includes director Erik C. Wiese and producer and screenwriter Craig Schulz, son of the Peanuts comic strip creator Charles M. Schulz, who wrote the script with his son Bryan Schulz and frequent collaborator Cornelius Uliano. This particular special puts the spotlight on Charlie Brown’s younger sister Sally, who initially doesn’t gel as well with life in camp as her older brother before finding her own enjoyable experience within the environment. In an interview with Den of Geek, Craig Schulz, Erik C. Wiese, and Ben Folds shared how this special came together.

“Sally reflects my experience at camp, which was disastrous. I hated camp and had a bad time. Charlie Brown represents my son’s experience at camp. He loves camp and made lifetime friends,” Schulz shares. “Each of those characters are really metaphors for other things in life, with Sally representing the new generation and Charlie Brown representing the old generation.”

One of the standout sequences from the special is set to a song Folds wrote, titled “When We Were Light,” with the gang reflecting on their history with the camp. Powered by Folds’ wistful melody, the song features Schulz’s original character designs used in the early days of the comic strip before gradually evolving to the gang’s contemporary appearances. Schulz credits his son Bryan for coming up with the idea of incorporating the original character designs, happy to honor his father’s artistic legacy.

“That had never been done in the 50 years of specials that Bill [Melendez], Lee [Mendelson], and my dad did,” Schulz declares. “They were never bold enough to try something like that because I don’t think my dad thought people liked his old art. Now, we look back on it and we love the old art. I feel honored that we could do that and show it to the public.”

Folds and co-composer Jeff Morrow had previously worked together on the 2022 Apple TV+ special Snoopy Presents: It’s the Small Things, Charlie Brown, with both returning for A Summer Musical. Wiese felt both composers captured the jazzy spirit of Peanuts and the classic specials from the ‘60s associated with their composer Vince Guaraldi, without sounding dated.

“You think of Vince Guaraldi for a lot of the original Peanuts specials. That piano and small band is so important to the nostalgia and the feeling,” Wiese notes. “It’s something that Ben brings to it. He’s got the nostalgia and the feel for the Peanuts thing, but it’s a modern version for us that keeps the nostalgia. He’s the perfect musical identity for the Peanuts. We didn’t want to use an orchestra. We wanted to use his band, record it analog, and make it sound warm and not like a big Broadway musical.”

That spirit of collaboration was musical, with Folds admitting to getting chills when he saw the finished animation prepared by Wiese and his team set to his music as it evoked his own vision of the story. In writing songs for the more contemplative moments of the film, Folds was able to strike a careful balance with how the iconic character carried himself in song.

“I didn’t think about this exactly at the time, it was internal, but we’re getting a little too close to Charlie Brown and that needs to be dealt with because is Charlie Brown the kind of kid that you saw singing his heart out to you? Probably not! He’s a little more guarded,” Folds reflects. “When I was directing the wonderful child singer for Charlie Brown, he and I had to talk about that. Chuck is not a soul singer, he’s just not going to give you that much of himself. We have to meet him halfway. It was fun to build those emotions.”

In addition to working with the child performers singing for Charlie Brown and his friends, Folds appreciated getting to contribute the special’s more introspective and contemplative songs. More challenging was writing the up-tempo song “Leave It Better” which closes out the special, a cheerful number that Folds usually avoids stylistically. For the singer-songwriter, the key were the lyrics in the final verse as the gang admits doing their best might not always be good enough, with Charlie Brown asking the audience for luck.

“I was super satisfied with that thought because the generation that will watch this first will mess this up too. It’s really easy to tell kids that they’re going to save the planet, that they’re chaste, and that they’re going to make everything okay – but they’re not,” Folds explains. “Kids are told things are going to be bad all the time. This show flies in the face of that. It’s not going to be all bad. You have agency and can change some things, but you don’t want to go too far and say things in a major chord, bob’s your uncle, and we’re all great.”

The new line of Peanuts specials on Apple TV+ has ventured in creative areas the timeless franchise hasn’t explored with such depth, including spotlighting supporting characters and, now, going into a full-blown musical. Drawing from universally relatable experiences while not forgetting its history, with Wiese maintaining attention to the all-too-familiar vulnerabilities of perpetual protagonist Charlie Brown.

“I think that’s why we love Peanuts so much,” Wiese observes. “Charlie Brown loves [camp] and he’s different there than when he’s back home. Back home, he does wrestle with that. Here, it’s where he shines and he’s different. When it’s threatened, he returns to that. It has more gravity to it. I think we’ve all had that thing where we don’t want to let go. That thing that we don’t want to let go and the places that we love so much change. I think that’s why it resonates.”

Snoopy Presents: A Summer Musical will be released August 15 on Apple TV+.