#Adventure time pilot nickelodeon series
#Adventure time pilot nickelodeon tv

It’s home to vampires who drink the color red instead of actual blood, but it was devastated by war. A post-apocalyptic world of magical monarchs and oddball inhabitants, Ooo finds the balance between child-friendly fantasy and more adult laughs. What eventually tipped the scale in Adventure Time’s favor was the development of the show’s primary setting, the Land of Ooo.

#Adventure time pilot nickelodeon series

And though Ward did work for the network on another show, The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack, it was unclear whether he could transform his pitch into a full-fledged series without losing any of its original charm. Its combination of fantasy, absurdity, and hints of darker humor had the potential to pull in an older crowd of cartoon enthusiasts and hipsters - less certain was if this mix would appeal to kids. The pitch stuck out for good reason, but Sorcher says it also raised a number of concerns. The pilot found Finn - then-named Pen - indulging in behavior that was both heroic, like saving a princess, and totally weird - traveling through time and space to encounter Abraham Lincoln on planet Mars.

#Adventure time pilot nickelodeon tv

( MORE: YouTube to Boob Tube: Dane Boedigheimer’s Annoying Orange TV Show Has Kids Hooked) “It was unlike any cartoon I had seen before.” “I was, luckily, in the position where I could afford to take a risk, because that’s what this show really represented at the time,” says Sorcher, who ultimately green-lit the show. The network ultimately passed on turning Adventure Time into a regular series, but the pitch eventually found its way into the hands of Cartoon Network executives, where then-new chief content officer Rob Sorcher says its unfiltered imagination didn’t inspire much confidence. Adventure Time’s animated short pilot was originally commissioned by Nickelodeon’s cartoon incubator program, Random! Cartoons, but the seven-minute episode leaked to the Internet and started generating viral traffic well before it actually aired in 2008. He didn’t actually get to play the hero (albeit a cartoon version) until years later. “I thought I was a big hero when I was little. “I would do petitions and get people to give up money,” Ward says.

Later, in middle school, Ward answered a more noble calling when he rallied classmates to protect the rainforests. A childhood interest in animation led his mother to take him to Simpsons creator Matt Groening to ask for advice – a fact Groening revealed when he crashed the Adventure Time Comic-Con panel in 2011. But he had the makings of Finn swirling around in his brain from a young age. Finn is an ebullient teenager with a signature white bear hat, prone to such unlikely exclamations as “Mathematical!” and “Algebraic!” Ward, on the other hand, is a low-key 30-year-old animator with an epic beard you can “like” on Facebook. ( MORE: Disney: Hand-Drawn Cartoons Coming to TV This Summer)Īt first glance, Adventure Time creator Pendleton Ward doesn’t seem to have much in common with his youthful protagonist. It’s that kind of world.’ It finally struck me - and I get it ever since.” “And he said, ‘You know what? This is this generation’s Yellow Submarine. “I was like, ‘I just don’t get it man,’” DiMaggio recalls. He remembers one conversation with voice actor Tom Kenny - Adventure Time’s Ice King villain - about the show’s unexpected popularity. If you binged on House of Cards earlier this year, prepare your queue for a dose of trippy whimsy.Īdventure Time’s evolution from web short to international franchise has surprised and stumped even those intimately involved with the show, like John DiMaggio, the voice behind Jake (as well as Futurama’s Bender). Season one of Adventure Time will go live on Netflix Instant on March 30, with new episodes airing on Cartoon Network through December 2013.

And, now in its fifth season, the show that began as a one-off animated web short is coming back to the medium on which it originally debuted: streaming video. Together, the pair has inspired a loyal legion of fans of that number in the millions. Nor did anybody expect that same show to be a success story with just about every other demographic out there, either.īut that’s exactly what happened to Adventure Time, an animated series following the exploits of Finn, a 14-year-old boy, and his best friend, Jake, a walking, talking and shape-shifting dog. Follow really expected a cartoon featuring post-apocalyptic candy kingdoms and Korean-speaking unicorns to become a children’s-television success story.