ANNOYED GRUNTS

Crossover! Is there any word more thrilling to the human soul? Family Guy has listened to your 1999-era fan fiction and is going full steam-ahead on a crossover episode where the Griffins meet the Simpsons, and wackiness is sure to ensue. Just think of the possibilities: maybe Homer and Peter will argue over which cartoon beer is better?? Maybe Stewie and Maggie will try to kill someone?? Maybe the talking dog will sniff the other dog’s butt?? Unfortunately you’ll have to wait more than a year to see all your amazing Animation Domination crossover fantasies brought to life on the silver screen.

Anyway, Brad Bird, who’s now a big-time director about to start production on a sci-fi movie called Tomorrowland and needn’t concern himself with piddley new developments in the field of long-running run-into-the-ground TV cartoons, weighed in on Twitter by saying he agrees with his former boss, 1995 Matt Groening.

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TOON BEAT

adult swim logoFox hired a guy from Adult Swim to find out how to better compete with Adult Swim and his solution was for Fox to make their own Adult Swim. Brilliant! The two hour programming block will air on Saturdays at 11pm starting next year.

Basically, they’re grabbing up all the “edgy” cartoons they don’t have room for on Sunday nights (which I will henceforth refer to as “Animation Domination Prime”) and dumping them on Saturday nights, formerly the home of MADtv, Wanda Sykes’s late-night talk show, and the remaining episodes of Sit Down, Shut Up they were contractually obligated to air. Nobody knows what’s on there now. The audience for this thing will primarily consist of Adult Swim viewers who forgot Saturdays are when Adult Swim airs The Animes.

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TOON BEAT

bobs burgersLately, Fox has been taking a huge gamble by ordering a bunch of cartoons that weren’t made by Seth MacFarlane – including a Napoleon Dynamite show, a Jonah Hill show, and a Jack Black show – and then chucking them into the lions’ den to see who makes it out alive, in the hopes that one day they might have a show with decent-enough ratings to ensure the survival of Animation Domination in a post-Simpsons, post-Family Guy future.

Surprising everybody, the enjoyable Bob’s Burgers has managed to make it out alive with all the lioncrystals, and has been handsomely rewarded with a second season, thus ensuring Bob will live to burg another day. This means people on the internet can now transition from “TOO BAD FOX WILL CANCEL IT JUST LIKE FIREFLY & FREAKYLINKS crying to accusations of shark-jumping.

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ANNOYED GRUNTS

A critic at a Television Critics Association panel asked a panel of nine FOX animated show producers why they’re so white:

A critic gets a laugh by starting a question with,”Here’s a question for the women and people of color up there” (there are none) … and asks about the lack of diversity in the genre.

[Family Guy creator Seth] MacFarlane: “There’s something about the medium of animation that it’s male dominated … might also have something to do with the demographics of animation also skewing male.”

[The Live Feed]

WAGON TRAIN

Here in Canada, on a Canadian channel called NewsWorld, [writer] Joel Cohen appeared live via satelitte to discuss the current strike. In it, he said there’s only enough new episodes lined up for the rest of the year, after that, that’s it.

He also said that when the writers do eventually return, there will be such a backlog that there won’t be any new episodes until this time next year which is November 2008.

What will become of ANIMATION DOMINATION??? [Some Guy On A Message Board]