Netflix’s cartoon adaptation of that movie where Jim Parsons played a little alien might not have set the streaming world on fire, but it and the surprisingly good Voltron show have quietly laid the groundwork for a solid relationship between the streaming service and DreamWorks Animation. Netflix may be losing Disney, but who needs that dumb mouse content when DreamWorks is now giving the streaming service a new She-Ra cartoon with some hip comic-book credentials and a TV series that will take us back into the weird and confusing world of Boss Baby?
She-Ra is coming from Eisner Award-winning writer Noelle Stevenson, the creator of Nimona and co-writer of Boom! Studios’ Lumberjanes. A press release says it’s a “modern take on the ‘80s girl power icon,” but that’s about all we know other than Netflix says it will celebrate “female friendship and empowerment.” The original cartoon was part of the He-Man expanded universe (The Masters Of The Universe Universe), but it’s unclear if the new show will retain that since Netflix doesn’t currently have its own modern take on the ‘80s boy power icon.
Then there’s The Boss Baby: Back In Business, which sounds like a straightforward expansion of the movie’s plot—the baby is a boss, he has a brother named Tim, and any similarities to our reality are merely coincidental. The original film was an utterly bizarre exercise in arbitrary world-building that raised more questions about the mechanics of the Boss Baby world than it answered, but unfortunately it sounds like the TV show will just stick to the movie’s basic premise rather than fleshing out the weirdo world of babies engaging in corporate subterfuge with similarly corporatized puppies and drinking magical milk that keeps them eternally young like little tiny vampires in business suits.
In addition to the empowering warrior goddess and the baby that is a boss, DreamWorks is also giving Netflix a new Trolls show that acts as an “all-new chapter” in the saga, a Hey Arnold!-ish show about kids in a city called Harvey Street Kids, a Captain Underpants show that seems explicitly based on the books instead of that movie, and another season of Guillermo Del Toro’s Trollhunters show. You can see a trailer for the Trolls show below.