Grab your cereal and put on your jammies because cartoons are about to get fun for adults again. I don’t mean animation – Family Guy and Simpsons style – I mean cartoons, where you sit on the floor too close to the TV and laugh like an idiot with your 6-year-old. Big Hero 6 is coming to TV! (Maybe now I’ll be able to find that Baymax plush I always want when I get sick.)
Disney announced a new show premiering on Disney XD in 2017 which picks up just after the events of the film. From the Disney blog:
Hiro is the newest prodigy at San Fransokyo Institute of Technology, and he faces daunting academic challenges …. not to mention the social trials of being the little man on campus. Off campus, the stakes are raised for Big Hero 6 as they must protect their city from an array of scientifically enhanced villains.
We don’t know who those villains might be, but we do know that the gang is back—Hiro will be joined by Wasabi, Honey Lemon, Fred, Go Go, and Baymax!
The way the movie ended definitely hinted at a sequel so it’s unclear if this series will take the place of another feature or become part of a larger cross-marketing plan. The original creators, Don Hall and Chris Williams, have said they’d love to work with the characters again and the title has been kicked around as part of Marvel’s overall plan, though no mention of what phase they’d slot it into.
The 1998 Marvel comic that the movie was based on was very different than the finished film. It leaned toward an anime style and focused more on the entire Hero 6 team, which was assembled by Japan’s government to protect the homeland – another variety of X-Men, Avengers, Defenders or any of Marvel’s other villain-fighting teams. The studio was looking for a unique property, but something “appealing and huggable” Hall told Bloomberg, so the genesis of Baymax became the focus, and a new graphic design took place.
It worked in a big way; and with audiences attached to the characters now Marvel/Disney could tie this in with other Marvel properties (two X-Men crossed over into the comics) or they could keep the story self-contained. But in animation worlds always seem to collide – think of the way Walt Disney’s movies all seam together or the one-world-theory of Pixar.
Mark McCorkle and Bob Schooly, creators on Kim Possible and The Penguins of Madagascar, will be overseeing the show and Nick Filippi will join them in an executive producing role.