Genndy Tartakovsky Developing Animated Crime Series ‘Heist Safari’ For Adult Swim

Animation industry icon Genndy Tartakovsky (The Powerpuff Girls, Primal) will develop Heist Safari, a new “animated high octane comedy” for Adult Swim, as reported by Deadline earlier today.

Tartakovsky gave an update on the series at this year’s Annecy International Animated Film Festival — almost exactly a year after he first pitched it on stage to Adult Swim President Michael Ouweleen at the same festival in 2024, according to Deadline.

The summary for the series is as follows, per Variety:

“The robbers are three brother frogs, control freak James, neurotic Issac, and little George, who thinks he’s brilliant but is actually totally not. Estranged, they meet up at their father’s funeral, where they are informed that they will only inherit his fortune if they pull off a bank heist, stealing the contents of a bank’s vault numbered 88.

Trouble comes when all three cut side deals for help in the form of a Japanese yakuza tiger, a Russian mafia hippo and an Italian gorilla mobster. The police are wildebeests.

Every episode is executed as just one shot and they will not be told in chronological order. The whole has an EDM score.”

Tartakovsky made multiple other appearances at this year’s Annecy to celebrate projects past, present, and future. He sat on a panel commemorating 25 years of Cartoon Network, having helped develop some of the channel’s most renowned programming (such as Dexter’s Laboratory and Samurai Jack). He also promoted his upcoming Netflix film Fixed, another adult comedy which follows a dog who must come to terms with his impending neutering, via Deadline.

At the Cartoon Network panel, Tartakovsky mused about how he thought the Youtube-infused landscape of modern cartooning made it possible for young creators to break into the industry, and that if he was starting out today, he would “work a day job and then at night make cartoon after cartoon until something hits,” per Deadline. He added that he “feels like when I was younger, I feel like that energy makes me still want to do new things.”

Heist Safari does not currently have a release date, while Fixed will release on August 13th. This year’s Annecy International Animated Film Festival concludes on June 14th.