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Posts tagged as “Adult Swim”

Creator Aaron McGruder and Sony Animation to Reboot “The Boondocks” TV Series

By goodblacknews on June 12, 2019
“The Boondocks” Animated TV Series

According to thewrap.com, Sony Animation announced today that it will be producing a re-boot of the Aaron McGruder comic-strip-turned-TV-series The Boondocks. The show is coming back with McGruder, who exited after season 3 the first go-round, and it will be a “complete re-imagining” of the show for “the modern era.” The news was announced by Sony at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival.

The Boondocks was a satirical animated series that followed two brothers, Huey and Riley Freeman, as they moved from the inner city to the suburbs known as Woodcrest. Throughout the comic strip and the animated series, The Boondocks blended political and social commentary through a wide range of exaggerated characters from Riley to Uncle Ruckus.

What isn’t known is whether or not the show will return to Adult Swim on the Cartoon Network. Also, it’s not clear whether Academy Award winner Regina King, who voiced both Huey and Riley, will return, though according to blackamericaweb.com, John Witherspoon will reprise his role as Granddad.

Carl Jones' Animated Musical "The Wizard Of Watts" Airs Saturday on Cartoon Network, Takes on Police Brutality

By goodblacknews on January 5, 2015
“The Wizard of Watts,” an animated musical coming to Adult Swim on Saturday, tackles police brutality during a charged time. (Credit: Adult Swim) 

LOS ANGELES — “The Wizard of Watts,” a coming animated television musical, was conceived two years ago as a big, fat gob of raucous entertainment wrapped around a nugget of racial commentary.

Then, with the musical’s animation already far underway, Ferguson, Mo., became a flash point, starting a national debate about race, overzealous policing and the need for officers to wear body cameras. Then came the phrase “I Can’t Breathe” and the broader protest against police brutality.

Suddenly, “The Wizard of Watts,” with its devastated black neighborhoods and army of pigs, took on greater weight. How the musical will be received by viewers at a racially charged cultural moment is anyone’s guess. But when it arrives on Cartoon Network’s after-hours Adult Swim block on Saturday, “The Wizard of Watts” will at the very least become one of those eerie instances of art accidentally mirroring life.

The primary villain in the Magical Land of Oz-Watts, where the story takes place, is a vicious pig clad in riot gear. Water does not neutralize this Oz villain; instead this baddie gets melted with a camcorder. “Oh, no! Not an irrefutable visual record of my illegal actions!” the anthropomorphized pig wails as he turns to mush at the musical’s climax.

Even Carl Jones, the director of “The Wizard of Watts” and one of its writers, was surprised at hitting such a cultural bull’s-eye.

“I take pride in tackling things with my gloves off, but animation takes such a long time to produce that you usually don’t end up being all that current,” he said.

Mr. Jones had noticed on social media how African-Americans were increasingly using cellphone cameras as “protection from police, like as a weapon,” he said.

“Nobody was talking about it and so I decided we had to take it on,” he said.