A new animated show coming to Hulu titled Solar Opposites comes from co-creators Justin Roiland and Mike McMahan, the pair recently talked about the series with The Hollywood Reporter via their podcast TV’s Top 5.
You can listen to that podcast here, the Solar Opposites stuff starts at the 57-minute mark.
In the interview, Justin and Mike say that the show was originally at 20th Century Fox Television and eventually made it’s way to Hulu, and despite Disney’s involvement with both companies, Justin jokingly admits he doesn’t believe Disney is even aware they exist yet.
They also reveal that while Rick & Morty might still have to go through some hoops with censors to air on television via Adult Swim, Hulu allows them to go even darker and violent. The streamer is seemingly letting them pretty much do whatever they want which sounds like the creative freedom that is known from the format, Netflix is also known for allowing creatives a lot of wiggle-room concerning tone and content.
MCMAHAN: “Weirdly conversely Rick & Morty is TV-14 and we’re TV-MA, so we keep putting things in there thinking someone is going to say ‘no’ and then it’s just in there in the final cut and then we’re like ‘Maybe we should have said no, this is disgusting or this is crazy’. But I think because it’s on Hulu…we didn’t really have any gatekeepers on this for better or for worse.”
ROILAND: “Mike and I keep like being tickled that these innocent non-malicious aliens causing so much gore and death. They’re so likable and sort of naive…it’s just funny to lean into that.”
While Disney might not be aware of Justin and Mike’s new show, Marvel Studios is aware of Rick & Morty as Pickle Rick’s writer Jessica Gao is the showrunner on the upcoming She-Hulk series for Disney+ and fellow writer Michael Waldron is not only working on the Loki series, but he’s also tackling rewrites for Sam Raimi’s Doctor Strange In The Multiverse of Madness.
Mike points out that while Solar Opposites might get some visual comparisons to Rick & Morty that they were developing the series before the other show was even massively popular. But it still has differences as well and ultimately is in Justin’s style.
Justin and Mike had an interesting way of answering questions about a crossover.
ROILAND: I like to think the shows take place in the same multiverse. I’ve been saying that though, that they take place in the same multiverse.
MCMAHAN: They also take place in the same multiverse as The Simpsons and Seinfeld. We’re a spinoff show of Seinfeld.
ROILAND: Navigating those IP waters, those are two behemoths we got Disney+ or Disney and you have the HBO/AT&T/Time Warner behemoth those are very separate pools of water, I don’t know.
MCMAHAN: Which one of those creatures is big enough to consume the other so we can be in the same pond?
The pair are open to making as many seasons as Hulu wants after the original two-season order.
You can start watching Solar Opposites on May 8th.
SOLAR OPPOSITES: Co-created by Justin Roiland (Rick & Morty) and Mike McMahan (ex-writer’s assistant on Rick & Morty), Solar Opposites centers around a team of four aliens who escape their exploding homeworld only to crash land into a move-in ready home in suburban America. They are evenly split on whether Earth is awful or awesome. Korvo (Justin Roiland) and Yumyulack (Sean Giambrone) only see the pollution, crass consumerism, and human frailty while Terry (Thomas Middleditch) and Jesse (Mary Mack) love humans and all their TV, junk food and fun stuff. Their mission: protect the Pupa, a living supercomputer that will one day evolve into its true form, consume them, and terraform the Earth.
