Dan Harmon and the ‘Rick and Morty’ Team Are Making a New Animated Series About a Haunted Hotel
In Rick and Morty creator Dan Harmon’s next animated comedy series, most of the characters are going to have some kind of unfinished business. Hopefully the floors will hold them up this time around.
The modern television landscape has been hellish for most aspiring showrunners, especially those with an interest in adult animation. The TV industry as a whole has contracted from the previous era of peak TV into a leaner, more conservative and, frankly, less creative period where profitability demands are more dire than they’ve ever been in the streaming age to the detriment of the more ambitious animation artists. However, thanks to Harmon and a handful of creatives from the Rick and Morty crew, that doesn’t mean that ingenuity in new cartoons is entirely dead — it’s more undead, as is the case with the upcoming Netflix project The Undervale.
The Harmon-produced project comes from creator and showrunner Matt Roller, who wrote the iconic Rick and Morty Season Two opening episode “A Rickle in Time” and currently works as co-executive producer on Harmon’s animated Fox comedy Krapopolis. According to Netflix’s official news outlet Tudum, The Undervale will be a story “about a single mother of two who struggles to run a hotel that happens to be haunted.”
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Hopefully it’s not haunted by Diane — Rick finally avenged her just last season.
Along with Roller and Harmon, The Undervale production team will include other Rick and Morty alumni, such as executive producer Steve Levy and supervising director Erica Hayes. Additionally, Spider-Man: No Way Home writer Chris McKenna will executive produce, alongside Levy and Harmon.
“The Undervale is wildly inventive and I’m very grateful to Matt, Chris, Dan and their team for bringing their talents to Netflix,” Netflix director of adult animation Billy Wee said in a statement. “They are phenomenal collaborators, and I can’t wait for fans all over the world to experience this hilarious show.”
Series creator Roller also told Tudum, “I’m thrilled to be working with Netflix and an amazingly talented cast and crew to bring to life the stories of the dead, the evil, and the struggling hospitality workers at the Undervale Hotel.”
Hopefully, the upcoming run of The Undervale and the operations of the titular undead hotel go somewhat smoother than Rick Sanchez’ most recent attempt to harness the bridge between the world of the living and the world of the dead for his own gain. I’d hate to see a new generation of animated antiheroes get zapped by the Laser Pope.