Adult Swim just rolled out its plans for dominating late-night viewers’ attention, which include the return of Samurai Jack that we first reported on last year. The network will air new half-hour episodes of Genndy Tartakovsky’s animated during the 2016-2017 season, though it hasn’t announced the actual premiere date yet. There’s lots of animation on the slate, which will also extend streaming/business hours so that Adult Swim shows are on all day long.
Adult Swim is also plotting a Robot Chicken: The Walking Dead special that will see Seth Green, Matthew Senreich, and Robert Kirkman join creative forces to tell another story of battling the walking dead, because someone else is already fearing them. The press release was light on the details here as well, but we know the walkers have made their way into Robot Chicken’s stop-motion world before. Kirkman “appeared” as himself in the “Zombie Love” parody a few years ago.
Other specials include Funny Or Die’s Montana James, about “a feathered-cap-wearing explorer,” and Brett Gelman’s Dinner in America, which will see the Gelman host a roundtable discussion on racism with actors Loretta Devin, Shareeka Epps (Half Nelson), Joe Morton (Scandal) and The Wire’s Mack Wilds.
Elsewhere, Adult Swim notes Rick And Morty will be back, but we already knew that. But Dan Harmon’s also teamed up with his Rick And Morty writer Tom Kauffman on the pilot Art Prison, a live-action series that will feature “talented convicts [vying] for one last shot at success inside a Prison for the Performing Arts.” It’s presumably a scripted series, and not a reality competition, though stranger things have happened. Adult Swim is also touting the pilot for Henry Bonsu’s animated Lazor Wulf, which is just what it sounds like, regardless of the spelling. China, IL’s Daniel Weidenfeld is executive producing with Bonsu.
Dream Corp, LLC, the workplace comedy from workplace comedy vets John Krasinski and Stephen Merchant, is also in the lineup. The surreal series is set in a rundown dream therapy facility, where “absent-minded professor” Dr. Roberts (Napoleon Dynamite’s Jon Gries) and his staff analyze people’s dreams. And a whole bunch of other shows are coming back, including The Eric Andre Show, Black Jesus, Neon Joe Werewolf Hunter, The Venture Bros., Check It Out! With Dr. Steve Brule, and Tim & Eric’s Bedtime Stories. And the webseries Decker has become the cable series Decker: Unclassified, thereby bringing Tim Heidecker’s daring exploits to more of the masses.
But if you’re more of a daytime viewer, Adult Swim is now offering a lot of streaming content. There’s Stupid Morning Bullshit, a call-in show that covers pop culture news; Crosswords, which is also exactly what it sounds like; Call Of Karaoke (ditto); and FishCenter, which is a “live, daily interactive comedy and game show based around the Adult Swim aquarium,” where the losers are presumably flushed down the toilet.