HBO has ordered not one, but two seasons of Mark and Jay Duplass’ new animated show Animals, on the strength of a strong showing from the comedy at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. (The network presumably realized that it was just going to end up renewing the brothers’ show after three episodes again anyway, so it might as well save everybody some time.) The series sees animated animals hold forth on the minutiae of life in the voices of various comedians, including several of Mark Duplass’ co-stars on The League—Nick Kroll and a very Rafi-esque Jason Mantzoukas both appear in the trailer, as does Silicon Valley’s Zach Woods. Animals is set to debut next year, with other planned guest vermin including Marc Maron, Rob Cordry, and Nathan Fielder of Nathan For You.
Animals will be the Duplass brothers’ second TV show, after Togetherness, also on HBO. The brothers are serving as executive producers on the project, along its original creators, Phil Matarese and Mike Luciano. In a somewhat unorthodox move, the team had actually already mostly self-funded and completed the show’s first season, which is currently in post-production, when HBO picked it up and commissioned a second.
Besides their TV deals, the Duplasses—Duplassi? Duplassoids? Hm. Jay and Mark Duplass also have an ongoing deal with Netflix, whereby they’ll produce four new films for the streaming service over the next few years, presumably as a sort of carbon-offset for all the spiritual pollution the service’s similar deal with Adam Sandler is kicking up.
