Fans of the absurd animated series of adult Swim Swim Smiling friends Have a lot more reasons to smile.
The co-creators’ show Michael Cusack and Zach Hadel won a two-season pick-up, The Hollywood Reporter has learned exclusively. The two additional seasons will take the series of favorite worship comedies of season five, the third season previously announced for the first this fall.
Cusack and Hadel joined Adult Swim Vice-President of Development Cameron Tang for the program of the program at the Annecy Animation Festival on Wednesday, where the team announced that the seasons four and five are currently in production in Williams Street. The presentation also included a first exclusive preview of the third season to come for the show Smiling friends This was launched in 2022 and focuses on colleagues Charlie (expressed by Hadel) and Pim (CUSACK) trying to bring positivity in the lives of others.
“This means that you don’t have to do the same episode on which the engine of the show is based, namely smiling friends who help a depressed character,” explains Cusack THR About the collection. “Like the shows we love and that we have grown up, the best part is now that we can make an entire episode on a secondary character and zoom more on them and explore the city.”
Smiling friends
Gracieuse of Adult Swim
In terms of which the secondary characters previously introduced could be privileged for more screen time, Cusack explains: “There are so many. Of course, Mr. Frog is always someone for whom it is fun to come back. His mind is really the spirit of the madness of the series.
Cusack and Hadel both cite the pilot of their show and the episode “Gwimbly” which launched season two as among their favorite episodes to go out. But they also find certain episodes that push them.
“Even certain episodes of which we were not satisfied at the time, we are satisfied later,” notes Cusack. “” Frain the eyebrows ” [from season one] It was a good example of an episode that we do not feel well. We always say episodes that feel extinguished, we call them episodes of stress because generally we have a deadline, and it is like: “We must do it”. And we just have to write a whole script in a day which we feel like not to work. But something about the energy of having this deadline brings strange stuff. The episode “Renaissance Men” of the episode “frowning of eyebrows” is a good example. It really came out of panic. So we are really proud of that one now, because of its stupidity. »»
Although it can sometimes be a race to finish a script, they do not plan to add more writers to the mixture, the duo remaining responsible for ideas and writing. “Even the pilot, it has always been like,” you and I can write it, and if we really have the impression that we must develop it, we can extend it, “said Hadel about himself and Cusack not committing a writing team.” For the most part, every episode idea, each script is really just Michael and me and everything we think. “
As you can expect, season three will include an episode of Christmas, with Cusack teasing that “focuses on a character who needs more attention, which will be fun”. He adds what is in reserve for the third season: “As always, it is fun to play with new formats, new animation mediums, so we have done it several times. The first episode [of season three] To a funny character who plays a lot with the medium. It is also a guest voice of someone we really like.
The program now cultivated a dedicated fans base, including a large contingent of generation Z viewers, the creators of the show have used to receive many comments. “The method I found is when an episode leaves, I will try to read everything I can for about 24 hours,” explains Hadel. “Once you have read around 20,000 comments on all platforms, you say to yourself:” OK, I feel like I have absorbed most of the reactions of most people to this episode. “”
Although the current agreement of the program will take Smiling friends During five seasons, the creators have already started to think about the end of the race.
“It’s not going and will leave,” said Cusack on the series. “We want it to be like a nice little box, and we talked about potential seasons that we would like to stop, for sure, and it depends on the day. Sometimes we will wake up and we will say:” What do you know? Three seasons could be sufficient “. But the next day, we say to ourselves:” No, in fact, another number sounds better “. So we are still going, but we are quite faithful not to do without always.”
