Jon Hamm to star in his own Fox cartoon, Grimsburg

Jon Hamm just signed on for his first lead role on a TV series since Mad Men went off the air six years ago, with Variety reporting that Hamm is set to star in a new animated sitcom, Grimsburg, for Fox. Hamm will star as Marvin Flute, a grizzled, down-on-his-luck detective who moves back to his hometown in order to re-connect with his ex-wife (and solve a bunch of weird mysteries).

Grimsburg is the latest production from Bento Box Entertainment, which, over the last decade, has gone from being the studio primarily known for drawing Bob’s Burgers, to being Fox’s semi-official animation division (after the majority of the network’s animated efforts were scooped up in the Disney acquisition of 20th Century Fox). Certainly, the stills released of Grimsburg today resemble other recent Bento Box productions, including Duncanville, The Great North, and HBO Max’s recent shame-dump The Prince.

Also interesting: Grimsburg is being written by a fairly inexperienced team, with creators Catlan McClelland and Matthew Schlissel both having only a handful of small credits to their name. Showrunning duties will be under the more veteran hand of Chadd Gindin, whose past credits include The Santa Clarita Diet, The Cleveland Show, The Millers, Saturday Night Live, and a whole lot of other TV.

Hamm’s a veteran of voiceover himself at this point, having lent that smooth baritone to Legion, the Minions movie, Fox’s own Bless The Harts (in a recurring guest star role), and plenty of other stuff that needs a bit of that old Don Draper gravitas. (Including an episode of Spongebob where he played a character named Don Grouper.) No word yet on who’ll be joining him on Grimsburg, which—what with the living skeleton and cyborg cop hanging out in that cover image—feels very pulled from the Fox animation “regular people but also there’s a robot or alien or whatever” school of character design.