Creator of ‘Simpsons’ Enters Fantasy Realm
SANTA MONICA, California — Speaking as someone who has created two hit animated TV shows and has introduced his third series, Matt Groening has some advice to ensure a successful pitch meeting.
“You can say, ‘ It’s ‘ The Simpsons’ meets anything’ or ‘It’s anything meets ‘Game of Thrones,’ ” he said, “and you’ve got a deal.”
Mr. Groening was gently teasing his new show, “Disenchantment,” which Netflix released on August 17. His latest series certainly shares a satirical sensibility and a distinctive curvy cartoon style with “The Simpsons,” his enduring Fox comedy that starts its 30th season later this month. But while it takes place in a medieval realm of wizards and dragons, it is not exactly Mr. Groening’s answer to “Game of Thrones.”
“Disenchantment” is more like Mr. Groening’s comic amalgam of fantasy franchises like “Lord of the Rings” and the animated epics of Hayao Miyazaki. It is also Mr. Groening’s first show created for a streaming service — its initial 10 episodes can be consumed in a five-hour binge — as well as, consequently, his first to have a serialized narrative.
“I’ve been working for 30 years in sequential, weekly, prime-time animation,” Mr. Groening said. “To suddenly have a bunch of episodes that go up at the same time, you have to tell a big story. And it’s been really fun. However, it’s its own torture.”
For Mr. Groening, part of the challenge in creating “Disenchantment” has been attuning it to the tastes and pacing of contemporary television, which have changed considerably since the Simpsons were introduced.
At his office here in June, Mr. Groening, 64, was eager to show off a weathered notebook in which, for the past eight years or longer, he’d scribbled down his ideas for “Disenchantment”: l i neages of fictional royal families, lists of more movies to emulate (“The Princess Bride,” “Jabberwocky”) and sketches of a goofy elf named Elfo that he said he’s been draw- ing since the fifth grade.
Mr. Groening has built “Disenchantment” into a series about the misadventures of a rebellious princess (voiced by Abbi Jacobson of “Broad City”), that elf (Nat Faxon) and a demon (Eric Andre).
Though each episode of “Disenchantment” tells a stand-alone story, Mr. Groening said: “Every single thing connects to things that will pay off later. There are moments from the very beginning — hints and clues and Easter eggs — that we lay in there for the people who really care.”
To construct and populate the show’s interconnected kingdoms, Mr. Groening had help from some trusted colleagues. Josh Weinstein, the showrunner of “Disenchantment,” was previously a showrunner at “The Simpsons” and a producer of Mr. Groening’s science-fiction follow-up, “Futurama,” which ran for seven seasons on Fox and Comedy Central.
Justin Roiland, the co- creator of the Adult Swim animated series “Rick and Morty,” said that, when “The Simpsons” is at its best, “the characters are more important than the jokes.”
“As you watch those first 10, 15 seasons, they really wrote up to those characters. They wouldn’t sacrifice the integrity of a character for a joke,” he continued. “You’d occasionally be surprised — oh, wow, I actually feel emotion for this cartoon.”
Mr. Groening said his interest in creating “Disenchantment” came from a desire to try something new. “I just wanted to see what it was like to go someplace else,” he said.