Culture

Napoleon Dynamite, Black Dynamite Cartoons Coming Soon

by Jordan Yerman | October 12, 2010 at 08:53 am

627 views | 2 Recommendations | 1 comment

Napoleon Dynamite Cartoon: Fox Orders Half a Season

Fox ordered six episodes of a Napoleon Dynamite animated series. The original film cast is returning to supply the voices of their characters, including Jon Heder. Original writers Jared and Jerusha Hess, along with Simpsons writer Mike Scully, will be writing the episodes.

It remains to be seen if the tone and visual banality of Napoleon Dynamite can translate to an animated world: how do you prevent it from looking like King of the Hill or Daria? The characters themselves have been revealed: Napoleon Dynamite himself looks spot-on, and the cartoon versions of Uncle Rico and the Rex Kwon Do guy are hilarious.

Fox is padding out the season with seven episodes of another animated series called Allen Gregory, starring Jonah Hill. Between them, they're like a liger of animation.

The sizes of the orders to Napoleon Dynamite (6 eps) and Allen Gregory (7 eps) are unusual as they represent one regular 13-episode order split in 2. I hear the shows' producers are not particularly thrilled because animated series with such short orders are more difficult to staff and more expensive to make.

Black Dynamite: The Animated Series

There's another animated Dynamite coming to your small screen... Black Dynamite. That's right, the criminally-underappreciated satire from Michael Jai White is also getting the animation treatment, also with its original cast. New York Comic-Con 2010 attendees got a sneak preview, but the rest of us have to wait until Black Dynamite airs on Comedy Central's Adult Swim. The Black Dynamite cartoon is produced by Carl Jones; you may recognize the Boondocks-esque style. It also looks kind of like Afro Samurai.

So there you have it: two retro-themed screen gems, coming to a cartoon near you: both are currently in production.