March 30th, 2020 
Jackson Murphy 
The premiere of Nickelodeon’s original action-comedy series, Ollie’s Pack, is on Monday, April 6th at 4:00 P.M. (ET/PT). The 26-episode, 2D-animated series was created by Pedro Eboli (Cupcake & Dino) and Graham Peterson (Rick & Morty) and is being produced by Nelvana. Nickelodeon will air new episodes on Mondays through Thursdays the weeks of April 6 and April 13. The series is slated to debut internationally later this year, reaching over 170 countries and territories.
“Ollie’s Pack is filled with excitement, humor, and heart, and we are thrilled to welcome Ollie and his friends to Nickelodeon’s incredible family of original characters,” said Nina Hahn, Senior Vice President of Development and Production, Nickelodeon. Chris Rose, Vice President of Animation Production and Development, Nickelodeon, adds, “I can’t wait to introduce a new generation to the timeless tale of a boy growing up and finding his place, while simultaneously trying to save the world.”
In the first episode, “The Chosen One… Stinks,” Ollie’s stinky sweat is a hot commodity in the Monsterverse so he exchanges it with a monster who offers to do his laundry. Then, in “Not Another Superhero Movie,” Ollie and his friends utilize a monster’s powers to make an epic superhero movie for their film club.
(The following interview with creators Pedro Eboli and Graham Peterson was conducted as an email Q&A.)
Jackson Murphy: It’s an interesting dynamic of a kid chosen to protect the monster world from messing with ours – but he’s also kind with them and is able to get along with some of them. How did this concept really develop?
Graham & Pedro: We didn’t really think of it too much, our focus when it comes to the story is all about the characters and making them relatable. And one of the big aspects of being relatable is inclusion, and the idea that those that might seem different from you aren’t as different as you think.
We also like to play with the idea of contrasts and parallels in the stories, particularly the idea of playing up unreal moments in the regular world and regular moments in the monster world against each other. This has a way of leveling the disconnect between the two, and really makes a bridge where we can see Ollie and his friends connecting with the monsters on a personal level.
Really, some of these monsters aren’t that different from Ollie and his friends. They have regular lives of their own and relatable wants and needs. If we treat them like real characters, it’s easy to see where our main characters could find common ground with the monsters and get along with them.
JM: Why the backpack as the source of transportation? It’s a cool idea.
G&P: Without getting into any spoilers or ideas we’ve planned for the show, the short answer is: It’s a tactile object that kids can really relate with on their day to day. Something that is a personal creative extension for them that holds all their stuff kinda like a home away from home. It’s also something that they can uniquely call their own and that sometimes can be a literal heavy burden. We felt this acts nicely as a relatable shorthand for kids to understand Ollie’s take on how he interacts with the mysterious artifact.
JM: That intro shows A TON of monster characters. How many are there in all this season, and how was it designing and distinguishing them?
G&P: There are a LOT of monsters in this season, we think we might have lost count! We always start out with the scripts and the awesome writer team, and then it’s about conveying that monster’s personality in the most interesting and comedic way as possible. We had a crack design team working on this, and they came up with some wild stuff. The idea was to have a crazy variety of creatures, drawing from not just sci-fi, but also horror, fantasy and history. The Monsterverse is its own unique thing. We definitely have close to 50 creatures in the season alone. Sometimes we are able to bring back a character that we loved and want to see more of in another story, which is always fun.
JM: “Not Another Superhero Movie” is very well written. First of all, did you have a film club in school? Where did your love of movies begin?
G&P: Thanks for saying, it’s a fun episode! (Kudos to Jeff Sager for writing it!) Neither of us had a film club in school growing up, but it’s something that we really wished we did.
Graham: When I was a little kid my brother and I would make little films with our dad’s VHS camcorder, and played around with in camera editing. When I got older, over the summers my friends and I had a movie club. We were always watching films, talking about movies, filming stuff, and writing bad stories. Looking back it was a decent film education at a young age, though It was a lot harder to film and edit things back then. Now anyone can do it on their phone really.
Pedro: I had a similar experience making movies in school. Me and my friends would film book reports instead of writing them, doing entire recreations of plots inside my apartment. Thank god we had a teach who encouraged this kind of weirdness! Phew! But yeah, this episode and the idea of our cast having an AV Club is totally one of our kid fantasies coming to life!
JM: I love Bernie’s idea of a courtroom musical. BUT why did you ultimately decide on doing a superhero movie-themed episode?
G&P: We can still picture the courtroom musical in our head! This ones easy, it’s all because of Ollie: he’s a man of action and adventure, plain and simple. He’s the kind of character that if he’s going to make a film it’s gotta be big, bold, and over the top, and the superhero genre is perfect for that. It also allowed us to play around with classic superhero tropes, and have some fun with that. We were lucky to have a team of really talented writers and story editors (Mark Satterthwaite, Lienne Sawatski and Dan Williams), who always pushed for a mix of relatability and kid fantasy – and superheroes do fall squarely into this category!
JM: Who are some of your all-time favorite movie monsters?
Graham: Oh man so many, too many! The Godzilla movies were some of the first monster movies I ever watched, and I loved all the monsters in them. I also watched Predator at a really young age and loved that, but I think my favorite hands down has to be the Xenomorph Queen from the Alien series, very epic. Special shout out to, The Thing, The Fly, Gremlins, The Host, Tremors, Gump from Return to Oz, Demogorgon from Stranger Things, and the Rancor from Star Wars.
Pedro: I’m a The Thing man myself, and the aliens in They Live have just the most amazing design. John Carpenter really knows how to walk that line between recognizable and horribly weird. Also, every single one of those amazing puppets in Gremlins 2. I love them all.
JM: What was the process like in choosing the voice actors for Ollie, Bernie and Cleo?
G&P: We went through several rounds of auditions for the casting to find the right voices for the show. We wanted to make sure that we found the right natural voices that fit the characters so we could get the best range and also actors that really embodied the tone and style of the writing. There was a concern earlier on to make sure they sounded young enough, but we wanted to make sure first and foremost they embodied our characters and went from there. Overall we had some great auditions to pick from and ended up with a very talented and well fitting cast, they really became the characters and that helped to inform the writing, and it happened quite quickly. There is so much love for all the funny voice actors who came onto the production.
JM: What are some of the other Season 1 adventures you can preview for Animation Scoop readers?
G&P: We don’t want to spoil anything for anybody, but we have some great themes that we’ve explored like, responsibility, insecurity, hubris, and also some fun takes on some classic genres. Also, there’s a big event two part special at the end of the season (gasp!) that has us stoked for things to come! We are really excited for everyone to check it all out.
A pre-released episode is currently available on the Nick App and Nick On Demand, and will be available on YouTube starting Saturday, April 4. More information about Ollie’s Pack is posted here.
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