If you love your food shows animated, anthropomorphic and totally R-rated, then you need to forget The Bear and tune in to Prime Video’s new series Sausage Party: Foodtopia. The project is based on the well-received 2016 sleeper hit Sausage Party, which was directed by Conrad Vernon and Greg Tiernan and made over $140.7 million worldwide.
The mouth-watering show continues the adventures of Frank the Sausage (voiced by Seth Rogen) and his friends — Brenda the Hot Dog Bun (Kristen Wiig), Barry the Sausage (Michael Cera) and Sammy the Bagel (Edward Norton). Our offbeat food heroes try to build their own safe haven from mankind after a terrible food destroys their promised land. The voice cast also includes David Krumholtz (Lavash), Sam Richardson (Julius the Orange), Natasha Rothwell (Box of Crackers) and Will Forte (Jack the Human).
Foodtopia’s talented executive producers and showrunners Ariel Shaffir and Kyle Hunter chatted with Animation Magazine recently about their project and four-year-long journey lining up all the right ingredients.
“We started working on the show right around the beginning of the pandemic, so it feels pretty surreal to finally see it premiere,” says Hunter, who also collaborated with Shaffir on the Sausage Party movie and live-action series such as The Night Before and Future Man. “We hit the ground running, and the show gave us something to focus on during that time. Although it was a silly thing to focus on, the project was a bit of an elixir during some devastating world events.”
“I loved it when people told me that [Sausage Party] was the most messed-up thing they had ever seen.”
— Showrunner and co-exec producer Kyle Hunter
Shaffir says the bulk of the show’s team consists of the same people who made the movie. “Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg and Kyle and I would get in the room and talk about what the show should be about,” he says. “We knew that if the movie was successful enough and there was an appetite for it, we wanted to continue the story. We had so many different avenues to go down on. There was no shortage of material.”
The production’s smooth CG animation is produced by Stellar Creative Lab (Toronto) and Bardel Entertainment (Vancouver). “We wanted the show to have the same feel as the movie,” says Shaffir. “We were going for Pixar-quality CG animation.”
Hunter says he and his team relished the chance to work with the same top-notch comedic talent that worked with them on the movie. “They are some of the best ever,” he says. “We were fortunate to have some of the same principal actors to reprise their voices — people like Seth Rogen, Kristen Wiig and Michael Cera, and we have new actors like Sam Richardson and Will Forte as well. It was pretty thrilling to have them on board.”
The producers knew they were in for a long ride, because they were producing two eight-episode seasons at once. “We sort of produced them back to back, Lord of the Rings style. We were producing the first season of the show while writing the second one, and it was a bit more challenging than the movie because we were on a TV schedule.”
The duo says they were pleased with how audiences responded to the movie when it came out. “I loved it when people told me that it was the most messed-up thing they had ever seen,” says Hunter, who counts The Simpsons and South Park among his animation and comedic influences. “More recently, I think Rick and Morty and BoJack Horseman are also amazing.”
Enjoying the Golden Age
Both showrunners are pleased to see adult animation thriving in the streaming era. “Everyone threw their resources at animation during the pandemic,” says Hunter. “It was really a new Golden Age and we hope it continues. There have been a lot of changes in the industry just over the last year, and there have been some ramifications in terms of which projects get picked up. We definitely want to see more original animated [intellectual property] getting greenlit, and we certainly would love to do a third season of our show!”
Has working on a show featuring grocery store food items changed the way they look at what they eat? “I don’t think so,” says Shaffir. “More than anything else, though, I think I am now hardwired to think of food puns all the time. That’s the biggest way it has impacted my thinking!”
“I consume less dairy now,” adds Hunter. “But I think that’s only because I’m older and my body has less tolerance for it!”
Sausage Party: Foodtopia premieres all eight episodes exclusively on Prime Video in more than 240 countries and territories today (July 11) . The show is a co-production of Annapurna Television, Sony Pictures Television and Amazon MGM Studios.
Watch the trailer below:
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