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Just in time for Halloween, Hulu and Peacock are serving up a perfect show for viewers who like their animation spiked with some blood-red, ghoulish delights. Produced by DreamWorks Animation, the new series is called Fright Krewe and is executive produced by horror master Eli Roth (Hostel, Cabin Fever) and author James Frey (A Million Little Pieces). Set in New Orleans, the show follows the spooky adventures of group of misfit teens who have a little problem: They have to save the world from the biggest demonic threat it has faced in almost two centuries.
We had a chance to speak with the show’s exec producers Joanna Lewis and Kristine Songco to find out more about this delicious spook-fest.
As Lewis, a DreamWorks veteran who was a writer on Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous, Fast & Furious Spy Racers and Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts tells us, it all started when DreamWorks TV development exec Ben Cawood told them they were going to do a kids’ horror show. “Kristine and I were like, ‘Us? Really? We do comedy!’” she says. “But they shared Eli Roth and James Frey’s idea with us, and when we realized it was set in New Orleans and that it had a backdrop of voodoo we were pretty excited to dig in.”
Do That Voodoo You Do
Lewis says both she and Songco are total lore nerds. “I had just come back from a trip to New Orleans where I did a voodoo tour and learned how many misconceptions I had!” she adds. “It was so enlightening, and I thought it’d be great to be able to share what I learned. So we did a bunch of research, put our big girl pants on and watched some scary movies and knew this was something we couldn’t wait to sink our teeth into.”
Songco, who also wrote for Camp Cretaceous, Spy Racers and Kipo, adds, “In 2019, as we were wrapping up Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts, Ben came to us because he knew we were interested in doing stuff for an older audience, and this was it. We did our research and it gave us nightmares — which isn’t fun, but it helped us make the show!”
Both Lewis and Songco loved the fact that they could build this supernatural world and populate it with vampires, fairies, ghosts and other monsters. “I love that we were able to tell darker stories with higher stakes, and we got to explore real emotional reactions to some heavier story points,” says Lewis. “It was a super fun challenge to be ‘scary.’ You don’t often get to do it in kids animation and, as comedy writers, I don’t think it’s very common that you get to cross genres the way we have at DreamWorks. That’s something, as a storyteller, I am so grateful for, because it keeps things fresh and exciting!”
Songco agrees. “It’s always fun to play with powers when you’re in the supernatural space, but it’s also about tying them to the character — why they got this specific power and how it impacts their life. Outwardly, it’s a supernatural horror show, but the emotional stories are grounded in reality. Our hope is that the premise catches your attention, but the characters keep you invested.”
The show’s animation style is described as ambitious by the exec producers. “It was a process because we wanted the emotions to be grounded in reality, so we had to find that balance between getting the idea across without being too exaggerated or ‘cartoony,’” says Songco. “We aren’t artists ourselves, so we had to rely on references or just describing things in way too much detail and hoping the artists could see inside our brains.”
‘Outwardly, it’s a supernatural horror show, but the emotional stories are grounded in reality. Our hope is that the premise catches your attention, but the characters keep you invested.’
— Executive producer Christine Songco
Lewis and Songco were happy to dive into lots of horror novel, anime and TV series to get ready for their Fright Krewe adventures. They read lots of paranormal YA novels, Anne Rice books and watched the Fear Street trilogy and TV shows such as Vampire Diaries, Supernatural and Gravity Falls. “Lovecraft Country was great,” says Songco, “I ended up watching a lot of zombie shows for tense moment inspiration and anime for horror animation — Kingdom, All of Us Are Dead, Demon Slayer and Chainsaw Man.”
When asked about what makes this show different from older animated “horror” shows like Scooby-Doo or Clutch Cargo, Lewis mentions that they’re definitely playing in a darker space aimed at a slightly older audience. “The storytelling is much more serialized and less ‘monster of the week’ so you can get a bit more invested in the characters and what’s happening in their lives,” she adds. “There are still funny moments, but some of the scares and some of the things the kids go through are meant to be upsetting.”
According to Songco, Fright Krewe is also more dramatic, and there’s more mythology and backstory involved. “Everything is tied together, so every episode is crucial to where we end up,” she notes. “The characters aren’t perfect but they grow after all they go through together. If something happens to them, that affects them for the rest of the series — there’s no ‘reset.’”
Another great stand-out quality is the characters’ matter-of-fact diversity and the wonderful use of New Orleans as the perfect backdrop. As Lewis explains, “It was important to us that if we were doing a show set in New Orleans we did the city, its legends and its people, justice. Honestly, it’s hard not to fall for the city. The show is kind of a love letter to New Orleans. We tried our best to make sure it felt authentic and have deeply researched storylines, have our amazing design team be inspired by the architecture of the city, have consultants to help steer us in the right direction and most importantly, have a cast that got the city and what we were going for.”
“New Orleans is rich with history, and we tried to fit as many legends in there as we could,” says Songco. “But there’s so much more that we wanted to do. And on a personal note, this is the first show I’ve worked on that has Filipino characters, so it was really nice to be able to put little references to my family in the show.”
The showrunners also discuss the challenges they faced. Songco says, “We learned a lot. It’s difficult to build a world from scratch, especially a world that isn’t based on IP. So many people put their blood, sweat, and tears into this and we appreciate everyone’s hard work.”
Laugh, Cry, Scream!
As they await for audiences to discover their gem of a horror series, both Lewis and Songco hope viewers will also get the hidden messages of their show. Lewis says, “I really believe in the central message of the show: The choice between good and evil is always present, sometimes we make mistakes and choose the wrong thing but that doesn’t have to define us. It’s what we do after we stumble that says a lot more about who we are.”
“I hope that everyone finds someone they can relate to in the series,” adds Songco. “And that they realize that you don’t have to be perfect because mistakes are just part of life and you can’t change what you’ve done, but you can decide how to move forward. I also hope they’re entertained — if we can make you laugh, cry, and scream, we’ve done our job!”
Fright Krewe premieres on Hulu and Peacock on Monday, October 2. Watch the first few minutes in the preview below, or click here to check out spine-tingling trailer!
