DreamWorks Animation held a press event promoting its forthcoming 3D animated feature Rise of the Guardians at the Cannes Film Festival on Wednesday, screening 25 minutes of the film followed by a Q&A with the director and cast members Alec Baldwin, Chris Pine and Isla Fisher.

DreamWorks CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg credited author and illustrator William Joyce for the project’s genesis, saying it all began when Joyce’s daughter asked him if any of the characters that fuel kids’ imaginations – Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy – had ever met.

Director Peter Ramsey laid out how the movie, based on Joyce’s The Guardians of Childhood book series, has reinvented the iconic characters: Santa Claus is North, a big guy with a booming, Russian-inflected accent voiced by Baldwin; the Easter Bunny becomes the tunnel-travelling Bunnymund, voiced by Hugh Jackman; ToothFairy is a half-hummingbird, half-human creature voiced by Fisher; and the Sandman is a silent character, who Ramsay described as “a cross between Harpo Marx and Buddha.” In the movie, they are joined by a new recruit, Jack Frost, voiced by Pine, as they all do battle with the Boogeyman, voiced by Jude Law, who goes by the name of Pitch.