Robot Chicken, The Emmy Award winning series where stop motion animation meets pop-culture parody, began airing in Febraury 2005 and is one of the top-rated original series currently on Adult Swim. Their third installment of specials featuring DC Comics heroes, Robot Chicken DC Comics Special III: Friendship Is Magic debuts along with season eight of the show this October on Adult Swim.
Toonzone News, along with other members of the press, sat down with co-creator and executive producer Matthew Senreich, co-head writer Tom Root, co-executive producer Kevin Shinick, and animator Eric Towner at San Diego Comic Con 2015.
QUESTION: Is Mr. Banjo coming back?
TOM ROOT: Mr. Banjo always makes at least an appearance in the script. He might’ve gotten cut. I don’t recall.
KEVIN SHINICK: I thought there was a visual, but at this stage, you never can tell because this is going to be a 22 minute special. We write an hour and a half special and cut it down from there. You’ll see the deleted scenes on the Blu-ray, but sometimes we don’t even know what makes it to that final cut until the very end.
Q: If something crazy happens in Dawn of Justice, will it be reflected in Friendship is Magic?
KEVIN SHINICK: Put it this way: we like to be in sync with the universe, so that’s one of the reasons why this special is focusing on the bromance between Batman and Superman. Of course we’re going to take a more comical look at that.
TOM ROOT: There probably isn’t going to be a ton of overlap with the Zach Snyder movie, which we haven’t yet seen.
KEVIN SHINICK: We haven’t seen it and we wrote it a while ago.
ERIC TOWNER: Maybe they’re doing re-shoots based on ours.
MATTHEW SENREICH: That’s very possible. Geoff Johns is involved in both. He probably took our material and used it for the movie.
Q: Is it Fast and the Furious inspired with the bromance?
KEVIN SHINICK: Aren’t they all really?
MATTHEW SENREICH: There is a little bit of that, yeah. The opening credits is a lot of that.
Q: Do they race muscle cars?
MATTHEW SENREICH: Sort of, they actually do. Yeah, I’ll say yes to that.
Q: How many people tell you they hear Breckin Meyer more than anybody as Superman now?
TOM ROOT: Including Breckin…one. Just Breckin. He reminds us of that all the time. Sometimes we write scenes for Superman and then we’re like, “Oh, Breckin’s going to be the voice. We’re going to have to modify this a bit.”
Q: Is that why there’s been a reduction of Boba Fett bits as well?
KEVIN SHINICK: Well, since he’s not in the DC Comics world, we didn’t have to worry about that as much, but yes.
Q: Will Lindsay Lohan be coming back?
TOM ROOT: Another fine Breckin Meyer character.
KEVIN SHINICK: You know how we do a DC Comics special, a Star Wars Special…we should just do a Breckin Meyer special. Let’s be honest, isn’t every episode a very special Breckin Meyer episode?
Q: Did you have any guests coming to you asking if they could be on a Robot Chicken special?
KEVIN SHINICK: They do do that.
TOM ROOT: Occasionally, sometimes they will tell their reps that they’re open to doing shows like A, B, C, and D, and we’ll make that list, and we’ll find out from our casting director that they’re open to doing this. This coming season, Luke Evans did the show. It was because he was really interested in doing the show that he came to us, and he was great.
Q: Are there any bits that the guys at DC are like “…I don’t know”?
KEVIN SHINICK: Yes. I say that emphatically because I’m thinking of a specific instance, but across the board, they’ve been so more giving than I ever imagined. We’d be like, “They’re not going to do this,” so our first line of defense will be, “Show it to Geoff,” and Geoff’ll be, “Keep it in, I find it funny.” And you’d be surprised: “Oh, we’re shooting this.” Sometimes it makes it to the end, sometimes it doesn’t, but very rarely is it because of DC saying no, you can’t do that.
TOM ROOT: Sometimes we use our own limited powers of judgment to figure it out.
KEVIN SHINICK: We wouldn’t want to ruin that relationship.
Q: How far are you going to go down with unknown DC characters?
KEVIN SHINICK: I think we’ve done it. It depends on who you’re talking to. Here at Comic Con, what others might think are obscure, we’d be like, “Come on, Booster Gold? Of course he should be in there!” But to the average person out there, they’re like, “Who?” However, this special, we’ve gone crazy, and I keep comparing it to Crisis on Infinite Earths of the Robot Chicken specials. We cross boundaries, we go across other dimensions, we open portals, so we’re using a lot of characters you don’t normally see or at least versions of the same characters from another universe.
ERIC TOWNER: Bat-Mite’s in it.
MATTHEW SENREICH: Johnny DC. You’ll see him in the trailer. Johnny DC, and he’s wonderful.
ERIC TOWNER: It might be my favorite moment of the special.
Q: What’s his power?
MATTHEW SENREICH: He’s just a logo with hands and feet on there and he rolls around. I don’t know how to describe him beyond that.
ERIC TOWNER: And there might be an alternate universe Johnny DC as well.
Q: Did you create your own alternate universe or did you use the ones from DC canon?
KEVIN SHINICK: I think we created at least one alternate universe. Didn’t we?
TOM ROOT: Several.
KEVIN SHINICK: Several.
TOM ROOT: Wait a minute, DC might already have an all-monkey Earth.
KEVIN SHINICK: I think they do, but we found their best ones to go to.
TOONZONE NEWS: Do you have a favorite era of DC Comics?
TOM ROOT: I grew up reading early 80’s DC when George Perez and Marv Wolfman were doing New Teen Titans. That’s my golden age of DC.
KEVIN SHINICK: Me too. Len Wein, all those guys. They’re still writing, so it’s tough to pinpoint, but that late 70’s/early 80’s. Then I took a break, and then I came back in the 90’s heavily. You’ve got to give yourself a break every now and then. At one point, I stopped reading Spider-Man because he had more problems than I did. It started depressing me. I was like, “I gotta take a break,” then he turned it around, and went back and forth.
Q: Is there another property you want to dedicate a whole special to?
KEVIN SHINICK: We’ve been asked that before.
TOM ROOT: I think the one that comes up a lot is Lord of the Rings/Hobbit Universe. I think our writers have different levels of love for Lord of the Rings, whereas across the board, everyone loves Star Wars and everyone loves Superman and Batman.
Q: Ever think of doing an all Hasbro episode?
KEVIN SHINICK: Who got to you?
TOM ROOT: Maybe for stock options.
KEVIN SHINICK: It’s tough because, even Hasbro, we use toys, but they’re sometimes not malleable enough, so we have to create our own.
Q: Is there a sequence in the special that you can’t wait for people to see?
KEVIN SHINICK: Sadly, it was cut for me. I’m only kidding. This one has the most linear story of all the specials we’ve done. This is still Robot Chicken, it’s still a lot of crazy sketches. With the third Star Wars special, we tried a little linear story. This one has a linear story. That being said, there are sequences in the story that I’m looking forward to. I can’t give anything away without giving away the sequence.
TOM ROOT: I will say that if you enjoyed Mr. Alfred Molina as Lex Luthor performing with his high school talent show rock band, you will enjoy the third special when there is a callback.
KEVIN SHINICK: Again, there are things that got cut for time or whatever. There was a sketch that I wrote, I am just going to say, instead of Joker Venom, he created Jerker Venom. DC approved it. Every way along the lines as I was writing, I was laughing going, “There’s no way this is going to make it into the show,” and it got through everything, in the end, it got cut for time. Not because DC or anybody said no no no.
Q: Will it be in the director’s cut?
KEVIN SHINICK: It will be on the Blu-ray/DVD, yes.
Q: Is there any sketch you pitched more than once that keeps getting rejected?
TOM ROOT: I keep pitching stuff with the Teen Titans. They go to prom. I kept pitching them going to prom for the second special. It does happen, and sometimes out of laziness, writers will sneak in old sketches.
KEVIN SHINICK: Here’s the thing about laziness: sometimes they get in. I remember in the second Star Wars special, I knew there’s a joke there where Han says to Leia after Lando blasts his ship, he can’t still be sore about that, and I wanted to cut away, and I came up with, I swear, it must’ve been 150 ideas. Everybody had different favorites, and we couldn’t agree on one, so we just didn’t do it. So I kept repitching it.
Q: Any hope of ever finishing Titan Maximum?
TOM ROOT: We keep talking about doing a movie to wrap it up or a special. Eventually we’d like to touch on it again. Probably there will not be a season two, but bringing it back seems like something that will get done at some point.
Q: What horrible things do you have planned for DC characters?
MATTHEW SENREICH: For DC characters? Nothing horrible. Why do you immediately go horrible? Come on.
Q: You tortured poor Aquaman in the first one, in the second one, you insinuated Superman and Wonder Woman had an affair. The resurgence of Mr. Banjo?
MATTHEW SENREICH: I actually don’t think he has a cameo in this one.
ERIC TOWNER: He does. You may not see his face, but he may be in the credits.
MATTHEW SENREICH: That is true. I apologize. He is playing the banjo. We wanted to explore the relationship between Superman and Batman, so we’ll see their friendship, and how it grows, how it falls apart and fixes itself up.
Q: Has the recent popularity of the CW shows influenced you?
MATTHEW SENREICH: Not necessarily the special because we have our own versions for those characters, but we do have a CW sketch we’re doing this season where our nerd character is obsessed with the CW.
ERIC TOWNER: And we actually have Kristin Kreuk in the sketch.
MATTHEW SENREICH: And Tom Cavanagh. So we’ve got cameos coming into this one. It’s going to be good.
Q: Can you reveal who is playing whom?
MATTHEW SENREICH: It’s our usual cronies. Seth is our Batman and Breckin’s our Superman. We have Alfred Molina coming back as Lex Luthor. Our main villain in this one is Jonathan Banks, and he’s spectacular.
ERIC TOWNER: Weird Al. Alex Borstein is Wonder Woman again.
Q: Is she Reverse Wonder Woman again?
MATTHEW SENREICH: Reverse Wonder Woman will maybe make a cameo, let’s put it that way. We’re doing a multiverse thing, so there’s a good chance that Reverse Wonder Woman will show up in the background.
Q: Is there going to be a continuing joke of the Actual Characters of the DC Universe?
MATTHEW SENREICH: We didn’t do that.
Q: Is the special like that?
MATTHEW SENREICH: Not necessarily. Let’s just say Superman and Batman’s friendship screws things up. That’s pretty much what it is. Their friendship causes problems for the world. Should they be friends or not, I don’t know.
Q: Has there ever been a bit that’s so stupid that you thought it has to go in?
MATTHEW SENREICH: We just had a moment like that recently.
ERIC TOWNER: You want me to describe that? It’s a joke I don’t like, it’s a joke I don’t understand, and everyone voted to keep it in.
MATTHEW SENREICH: It’s so dumb. It’s just a guy going “Bell for sale”.
ERIC TOWNER: It’s a town crier with a bell, and he rings the bell and says “Bell for sale” and a guy walks in—
MATTHEW SENREICH: And he says “Here’s two dollars”.
ERIC TOWNER: That’s it.
MATTHEW SENREICH: The whole joke. But because it’s that bad that you just sit there.
Q: How much toilet humor do you get away with? I remember Deadman taking over Wonder Woman’s body.
MATTHEW SENREICH: That was a battle to get.
ERIC TOWNER: We never go that lowbrow ever.
MATTHEW SENREICH: No, never. We never go to potty humor. I’m sure there’s some I can’t think of at the moment.
ERIC TOWNER: Well, the Exo Squad stuff this season.
MATTHEW SENREICH: I should prep it by saying we are not far enough to know if it’s going to survive yet, but it’s been written, so we’ll see if it actually makes it all the way through.
Q: Any newly announced movie versions?
MATTHEW SENREICH: For this special, it’s very much our versions of these characters. We’ve created our own iconography for these guys, but no, we’re staying away from the movies. We lean a little more towards the TV stuff, though, but with the movies, it’s so uncertain still that we just step away.
Q: How many other obscure cartoons? Do you have lists of obscure cartoons you want to do bits about?
MATTHEW SENREICH: We don’t have lists per se, but there’s a lot of things I think we should try to do. This season is a lot of 90’s. There’s a Wild Thornberrys sketch that is ridiculous, and all the voices came back to reprise their roles. They have to do their own reality show in today’s environment. It’s a good mix. Obscure, though? If you name an old property, we’ve probably touched on it in some way.
ERIC TOWNER: We did Dino Riders last season.
MATTHEW SENREICH: Yeah.
Q: Samurai Pizza Cats?
MATTHEW SENREICH: Samurai Pizza Cats we have not done yet.
Q: Snorks?
MATTHEW SENREICH: We’ve done a bunch of Snorks stuff in the past. There’s some good stuff coming.
Q: Will Katee Sakhoff be coming back?
MATTHEW SENREICH: Yes. We have two lovely Bitch Pudding sketches so far. One is The Crucible with Bitch Pudding, and the other one is Murder She Wrote with Bitch Pudding, so yeah, Katee will be playing her. And we’re doing a bunch of Bitch Pudding merchandise that will be coming out this year.
Q: Where can we purchase this merchandise?
MATTHEW SENREICH: I think wall decals started coming out. Walls360 has those. There are even some T-shirts available, so yeah, a bunch of stuff.
Q: Have you guys ever given in to the demands of Twitter for more of certain sketches?
MATTHEW SENREICH: Yes. I am that terrible person who reads all of Twitter and how everybody hates the show and I want to know every little detail, but I like that because then it makes me want to figure out how to take what they hate and make more of it.
No, there’s characters you realize that people like, and that’s what I like to see. You know when you hit a sketch that people are really enjoying.
Q: What one shot characters are surprising that’s a hit with people?
MATTHEW SENREICH: Our humping robot is the biggest surprise. It makes no sense to us whatsoever, and we’re still trying to figure that out. A character like Bitch Pudding is a very nice surprise. That Gummy Bear…that sketch was like the Bell For Sale sketch where it was this terrible, dumb thing. It’s Michelle Trachtenberg 100%. She came in and she’s like “Do you want to just go for it?” and we’re like “What do you mean” and she’s like “I can scream really loud”, we’re like, “You might want to step back from the mike”, and she literally stood like four or five feet away and just yelled it out. She’s amazing, absolutely amazing. Turned a sketch that shouldn’t have been something into something amazing.
