Adult Swim’s broadcasting history is a long and, let’s say, idiosyncratic one: For every unqualified success like a Rick And Morty or an Aqua Teen Hunger Force sitting proudly on the channel’s roster, there are any number of AssyMcGees or Fat Guy Stuck In Internets lurking in the background—shows that never seemed to transcend the one “Funny in a writer’s room at 2 in the morning” joke that served as their genesis and instead simply disappeared after a season or two on the late-night air. And now, at least some of these Minoriteams or Titan Maximums are going to finally get their time to shine, as the network announced at the Annecy International Film Festival this week that it’s launching a new anniversary special celebrating its history—animated by its long-time pals at Robot Chicken.
In fact, Seth Green’s stop-motion series is actually gearing up for two such retrospectives, one focused on classic Cartoon Network characters—Courage The Cowardly Dog and Johnny Bravo both pop up in the released press photo—and one that’s a grab bag of actual Adult Swim characters. And, we’ll be honest, reader: Even as someone who basically didn’t sleep from 2006 to 2016—and thus consumed a lot of Adult Swim content—some of the pulls in top image here are outside your humble Newswire writer’s knowledge. (Nice to see Gerald Johnson’s Black Jesus and Chris Elliott’s Eagleheart are both still alive and well, though.) The press release for the specials doesn’t reveal how many Adult Swim voice alums will be back to voice their characters, but it does include both a release date (August 30) and the somewhat surprising fact that the special has an actual plot, a rarity for Robot Chicken‘s usual approach: “Every iconic character in Adult Swim’s history is aboard a cruise ship celebrating a quarter century on the air, but toasts turn to screams as it develops into a disaster of titanic proportions.”
Adult Swim was pretty busy at Annecy, actually: It also revealed that it was picking up a new series from legendary animator Genndy Tartakovsky, a crime comedy about three bank-robbing frogs called Heist Brothers. (We weren’t wild about Tartakovsky’s last stab at “adult” comedy, neutered dog comedy Fixed, but he’s a weird and varied enough creator that it’s typically worth checking in on whatever his new thing is.) Meanwhile, the network also rolled out a new trailer for Rick And Morty spin-off President Curtis— addressing at least some of our questions about it—and, more excitingly, showed off a teaser for Joe Pera and Dan Licata’s My Two Cars, the story of Keith Asshole, a man who must live with the eternal dilemma of owning both a PT Cruiser and a Mini Cooper while only being able to drive one of them at any given time.
Keep scrolling for more great stories.