Last Week in Animation: December 11th

Welcome to Overly Animated’s Last Week in Animation! This is a recurring series where we aggregate the news items most relevant to fans of the shows we cover regularly, as well as interesting tidbits on other animated television and film projects.

In the Cartoon Network Universe

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGQxlcDEgPw

Cartoon Network began running a commercial advertising the televised premieres of the six Steven Universe episodes that were released for fans via their app in November. According to TV listings, the airing order will be “Dewey Wins” and “Gemcation” on December 15, “Raising the Barn” and “Back to the Kindergarten” on December 22, and “Sadie Killer” with “Kevin Party” on December 29. However, the bigger news coming out of the promo was an offhanded mention of a “special event” in January. Cartoon Network has used that phrasing in the past to refer to the Out of This World and Wanted bombs aired earlier this year, so it’s possible new episodes may be available soon.

OK K.O.! Let’s Be Heroes! got a double shot of news last week, with not only the announcement of a second video game based off the property, but the announcement of a greenlit second season. The show also promises more “special crossover episodes”; Ian Jones-Quartey’s project already featured the 90s classic Captain Planet in one such episode of the first season. The new game, titled OK K.O.! Let’s Play Heroes, is in an even more classic cartoony art style than the actual show. The game is expected to be available on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and on Steam some time in 2018. [Deadline Hollywood]

Nominations Rolling In

As awards seasons begins to heat up, the Annie Awards announced their nominations last week. This ceremony is currently the most high-profile awards ceremony dedicated to animation (besides our OVA Awards; stay tuned!), so it makes sense that Coco, the most mainstream acclaimed animated feature of the year, headlined with 13 nominations. Some other highlights from the nominations list:

• Coco is joined by Cars 3, Despicable Me 3, Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie and The Boss Baby in the Best Animated Feature category. Meanwhile, in the Independent Feature category, the race is expected to be between The Breadwinner, Loving Vincent and In This Corner of the World.
• The Best General Audience Animated Television category (also known as the non-children’s division) has an eclectic group of nominees that really anyone has a shot at winning:
  • “Am I Gay?”, Big Mouth
  • “Stupid Piece of S**t”, BoJack Horseman
  • “Pickle Rick”, Rick and Morty
  • “Freshly Baked: The Robot Chicken Santa Claus Pot Cookie Freakout Special”, Robot Chicken
  • “Episode XCIII”, Samurai Jack
• Wendie Malick earned a nomination in the Voice Acting in Animated Television category for her work as Beatrice Horseman in the BoJack Horseman episode “Time’s Arrow”.

For a full list of the Annie Awards nominations, see here.

Meanwhile, the Golden Globe Awards just announced their nominations earlier today, and the Animated Feature category mostly followed suit with previous ceremonies, picking out Coco, The Breadwinner, Loving Vincent and The Boss Baby; Ferdinand was the outlier with the fifth slot. Three songs from animated films made the Best Original Song category: “Remember Me” from Coco, “Home” from Ferdinand and “The Star” from The Star. [Variety]

And over at the Writers Guild of America Awards, BoJack Horseman got both “Ruthie” (credited to Joanna Calo) and “Time’s Arrow” (Kate Purdy) nominated in the animation category. They join two Simpsons episodes and a Bob’s Burgers representative. [Animation World Network]

Marvel at the Movies

Sony Pictures released its first teaser of what looks to be a hyper-stylized animated Spider-Man film titled Into the Spider-Verse. This will mark the mainstream debut of Miles Morales, the Afro-Latino character that has filled the shoes of the classic Peter Parker character in recent Marvel comics. Morales will be voiced by Shameik Moore; the voice cast for this film also includes Mahershala Ali and Liev Schreiber. The film, co-written by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, is expected to premiere on December 14, 2018. [ComicBook.com]

Marvel also announced a new animated franchise titled Marvel Rising, which will feature several female teen heroes such as Spider-Gwen, Miss Marvel, Squirrel Girl and America Chavez among others. The franchise will kick off with six digital shorts, and will then result in a feature-length film some time in late 2018. [Animation World Network]

Other News and Notes

Speaking of Coco, as the Olaf’s Frozen Adventure short was removed from the Pixar film’s theatrical run, it will premiere on television, as the Frozen short was originally intended to air, on ABC this Thursday at 8 PM ET. [Broadway World]

This item is very late (I apologize for missing it last week), but here’s an informative Polygon article on former Avatar: The Last Airbender writer Aaron Ehasz’s new venture at Wonderstorm, a studio that’s working on a video game/animated series crossover project. Giancarlo Volpe, who recently left Star Vs. The Forces of Evil, has confirmed he is joining his Avatar collaborator on the project.

Unikitty! will officially premiere on Cartoon Network on New Years’ Day; the network plans to premiere one episode an hour beginning at 6 AM ET. The new episodes will also be available on Cartoon Network’s app. Cartoon Network had previously aired several “preview” episodes of Unikitty! in November. [Animation Magazine]

TBS just dropped a full season of animated television show Tarantula out of the blue on their online services. Tarantula is co-produced by Carson Mell (Silicon Valley) and Danny McBride (Eastbound and Down). TBS has also posted the first two episodes in full on their official YouTube channel. [Entertainment Weekly]

Ryan Reynolds (Deadpool, Green Lantern) has been pegged as the voice and motion capture role for Detective Pikachu in the film of the same title. The film, which had Alex Hirsch (Gravity Falls) as a co-writer on the script, will begin production in January and does not have a release date yet. [Hollywood Reporter]

And in this edition of Weird Animation of the Week, the Detective Pikachu reminded me of the video showing a theater’s reaction to the talking Pikachu in the recently released Pokemon: I Choose You!, which is magical and I periodically rewatch.

Hi, I am just learning that Pikachu speaks English in the new Pokemon movie and, yes, it is extremely fucking weird pic.twitter.com/k5hm5lyW7Y

— Ryan Broderick (@broderick) November 13, 2017