Development
By June 27, 2015 Screenwriters Brian C. Brown and Elliott DiGuiseppi initially pitched the story of a family of sea monsters living on land in plain sight to Chris Kuser, a development executive at DreamWorks Animation. Titled Meet the Gillmans, the script drew from their shared memories of growing up in Oviedo, Florida as well as Brown's personal experiences as a first generation Cuban American, The Gillman family are loosely based on Brown's real life family.
First time feature producer Kelly Cooney Cilella came on board as producer in April 2019. She previously worked as a story coordinator on Shrek 2, a development executive at DreamWorks Animation and a producer on the short film Bilby.
With original director Paul Tibbitt at the helm, and the addition of another writer, Neighbors from Hell creator Pam Brady, the film slowly started moving forward. In 2020, Faryn Pearl, who had known Cooney Cilella while working on Trolls World Tour came on board as the film's first head of story.
Cooney Cilella assembled her crew for the film, with Pierre-Oliver Vincent as production designer and Dave Walvoord as visual effects supervisor, the two having worked together in their respective roles on How to Train Your Dragon 2 and How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World. Jon Gutman as Head of Layout, who had worked on this position on The Croods: A New Age. First time lead editor Michelle Mendenhall, and first time art director Frederic William Stewart gave the film a unique look, and promoted some of the employees who worked on Trolls World Tour into first time leadership roles during the production, and also brought in some talent from DreamWorks's TV division for this film.
Cooney Cilella wanted to bring the film in a new direction, so after Tibbitt stepped down from his role as director, she contacted Kirk DeMicco, who had most recently directed the 2021 film Vivo to be director with Pearl being promoted as co-director. Tibbitt was credited in the final film under "special thanks".
Additional material for the film's screenplay was provided by Baby Mama writer/director Michael McCullers, Meghan Malloy, and the film's co-directors.
In June 2021, website TheGWW reported the film to be in production. Production was also expected to start in 2022. On March 14, 2023, the cast and crew were announced via Universal Pictures International Ireland's website. Many of the main cast was confirmed, while the director, co-director and producer were confirmed also respectively. DreamWorks Animation also announced its official title as Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken. The cast, crew, and official title were publicly announced two days later. Following the release of the film's second trailer in May 2023, Mike Mitchell, a longtime DreamWorks director who had recently set up his own production company Mike Mitchell Productions, was revealed to have served as executive producer.
Animation Magazine reports Cooney Cilella has been working on the film for several years. It was first pitched to DreamWorks about a family of sea monsters that were moved to the land and are hiding in plain sight. She stated: "Our heroine is such a lovable character and I'm so excited for audiences to meet her and fall in love with her the way we have because she starts the movie as a quirky, slightly insecure but bighearted character, but she's harboring a secret that she can't tell her friends." DeMicco stated that he cited John Hughes films, Easy A (2010), Lady Bird (2017) and Booksmart (2019) as his inspirations. Pierre-Olivier Vincent serves as the production designer, taking inspiration for the main character from the body of an octopus and bringing the "curviness to all the design language of the film", from the cars to the underwater world.
When asked if there had been plans for the mermaid world to be shown in the film, DeMicco stated; "there was an opportunity, but we had to make choices. And, so we always felt like if we had done that, we would've lost so much of the time, the personality of who is really getting to know Chelsea. And it worked well for our themes of the fact that they are all in hiding." In addition, he said that there were other story ideas that were cut from the film, such as some of the monsters shown in the statue room that were originally intended to be featured in the story.
The film was dedicated to Nick Levenduski, a crowds artist on the film who died before the film was released.
