A decade in the past, actor/director Matt Cohen and his filmmaking accomplice Sean Flanagan had an concept to make an animated comedy sequence a few group of over-the-hill legendary characters hanging out in a Cheers-like bar referred to as Public Area. “The regulars at this Hollywood watering gap had been all as soon as well-known characters which have fallen into the general public area,” says Cohen, who performed younger John Winchester on Supernatural and directed the final-season episode “Give Me Shelter.”
“They drink collectively and look ahead to the chance to be rediscovered, and rebooted by Tinseltown,” Cohen explains. “We’ve by no means requested the query, when life will get exhausting, the place do they go and the way do they cope with it? It’s basically the have a look at each actor in Hollywood informed by a favourite animated character. We’ll see what they’re doing of their 40s-60s, put up their Hollywood careers.”
In accordance with Cohen, there are about “200 public area characters that audiences will acknowledge. It’s going to really feel so much like an animated Cheers, however with characters you already know and love out of your favourite exhibits and the exhibits that you simply share along with your kids.”
Nathan Milburn
To voice the characters, Cohen reached out “to the circle of expertise that I do know and love like siblings,” he says, “the Supernatural household.” Practically each function is performed by a former forged member. Amongst them: Jake Abel (voicing Hercules), Jim Beaver (Sidney Sam), Rob Benedict (Kaulu), Briana Buckmaster (Dorothy Gale), Ruth Connell (Peter Pan’s Wendy Darling), Adam Fergus (Sherlock Holmes), Gil McKinney (The Mad Hatter), and Richard Speight Jr. (Quasimodo). “Working collectively and providing suggestions is how the Supernatural household all the time shined.”
“It is a humorous comedy and it’s actually an excellent time,” Cohen notes. (It’s additionally an grownup comedy with risqué traces and situations.) “Whenever you stand up from the sofa after ending the pilot and Louden Swain band’s entrance man Rob Benedict’s track is heard over the credit, you’re going to really feel wrapped in a heat hug and also you’ll need to go smile at one in all your mates and inform them about it.”
Followers helped finance the pilot, which will probably be out there free on YouTube in August. (A lower arrived on YouTube in July.) Hoping the present will get picked up by a streamer, the creators have 100-plus episodes able to go — together with ones through which Quasimodo and the Little Mermaid (voiced by Cohen’s spouse, Mandy Musgrave) fall in love, and the Phantom of the Opera and Hercules “determine to the right way to soar rope.”
Cohen voices the sequence’ solely authentic character, Shep Salazar, “a washed-up youngster actor attempting to run the bar and management all these hooligans,” he says. Bottoms up!
For a deep-dive into 20 years of Supernatural, from behind-the-scenes scoop to unique forged interviews, photographs, and fan tales, choose up a duplicate of TV Information Journal’s Supernatural Afterlife: twentieth Anniversary Particular situation, out there on newsstands and for order on-line at Supernatural.TVGM2025.com.