Seth MacFarlane’s foul-mouthed teddy bear Ted took movie theaters by storm in 2012 and returned with hilarious sequel Ted 2 in 2015. Now MacFarlane is taking us to the ’90s for the new, outrageous Ted prequel series, with the title character and a teen version of Mark Wahlberg’s John Bennett (played by Max Burkholder) navigating junior year of high school while living with cousin Blaire and Mom & Dad Susan & Matty. The seven episodes debut this Thursday January 11th on Peacock. Five-time Emmy-winning writers and executive producers Paul Corrigan and Brad Walsh (“Modern Family”), ViewScreen supervisor Brandon Fayette and visual effects supervisor Blair Clark take me behind the curtain of one of 2024’s first major shows in this Animation Scoop Q&A. (These interviews were conducted separately and were edited for length and clarity.)
Brad Walsh: After we knew we were going to be meeting with Seth and possibly working on this, I re-watched the movies and, with some distance, was like, “Wow. I can’t believe they’re getting away with this… and how well these jokes hold up.” And also how great that bear looked. And that was a while ago. That got me very excited for the meeting and exploring this character in new ways.
Charles Solomon’s Animation Year End Review 2023
Although he wrote them in 1859, Charles Dickens might have been thinking of animation in 2023 when he penned the celebrated lines, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us…”
Although the worst of the COVID pandemic had passed, the animation industry, like the entertainment industry in general, faced uncertainty about releasing strategies and box office earnings. Some films scored record-breaking successes in America and Japan, and earned critical raves. But there were also stunning critical and financial flops. Viewers returned to theaters in droves for Super Mario Bros. Movie and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, but they ignored Ruby Gillman: Teen-Age Kraken and The Amazing Maurice. The prolonged strikes by the Screen Writers Guild and SAG/AFTRA halted production for months; many animation artists joining the picket lines in solidarity. The future role of AI hung over the industry like a malign specter.
Looking over a year that see-sawed between Light and Darkness, I’m presenting the 11th annual awards for the year’s best and worst, named for the ultimate animation APM, Mikiko “Kuromi” Oguro.
“Suzume”