ANNECY, France — Michael Ouweleen, president of Cartoon Network, Boomerang and Adult Swim, a major force behind the rise of adult animation, signaled in Annecy the company’s intention to increase its presence in Europe and international markets generally.
“We really want to see Adult Swim originals come from anywhere in the world,” said Ouweleen Variety at the French festival.
The stars are aligning for the trip abroad.
In the US, Adult Swim is on the rise. In the fourth quarter of 2023, Adult Swim registered greater growth in prime time among people aged 18 to 49 than any other large cable network. He bent the three new animation series in 2023: “Unicorn: Warriors Eternal”, “My Adventures With Superman” and “Royal Crackers,” noted Cartoon Brew.
While Ouweleen was enthusiastic about an adult animation Annecy panel on Friday, he added: “The distribution of adult animation this week got better.” On June 11, Max, offering adult swimming, launched in France, Poland and Monaco, three of the 25 countries in Europe, where Max will be made available from May 21 to July 1.
“My great hope is that as more people in Europe [who are] going to art school and more creators see more and more Adult Swim content and become part of the family and create things for Adult Swim. There is nothing more rewarding than that,” Ouweleen said during the panel.
Great fun — and at times downright hilarious — Adult Swim’s studio focus on Thursday involved Adult Swim bosses pitching to the audience — made up mostly of prestigious French animation school students — about the company’s love and ability to cope. with full animations for the first time. series creators. Ouweleen was joined on the day by Kelly Crews, head of production, and Suzanna Makkos, executive vice president of original comedy and adult animation.
Crews remembers working with a first-time series creator named Pendleton Ward. Cartoon Network rejected the first six storyboards for its first series. What they got in the end was “Adventure Time.”
Two green season orders were announced during Thursday’s panel, both from the series’ first-time creators: Adele’s “Supreme,” Williams’ “Oh My God, Yes! A Series of Extremely Relatable Circumstances” and “Haha You Clowns” by Joe Cappa.
Adult Swim also aired a clip from a third director of the debut series: “Women Wearing Shoulder Pads” by Gonzalo Córdova, and Telenovela, from 1980s Ecuador, about a businesswoman who campaigns for people to stop eating guinea pigs. India and start adopting them as pets.
No wonder the panel was called Adult Swim: Defying Expectations.
Ouweleen himself does this. He is not tender. When he’s not smiling, he’s laughing. He grew up in Rochester, New York, drawing comic books, which his father copied. His first job was building fireproof safes on the night shift.
Working in advertising at J. Walter Thompson, where he did a pilot for Nickelodeon, at a Christmas party someone asked who wanted a job at Cartoon Network. “My now-wife thinks so,” Ouweleen recalled. The following Monday, he gives an interview at the headhunters’ office and is named creative director of Cartoon Network. That was in 1996. Three years later, he championed and co-founded Adult Swim, serving as its first creative director at launch and co-creating one of its first shows, the cult favorite “Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law.”
Since then, as I said on the adult animation panel on Friday, he had “all kinds of possible work” at Cartoon Network and Adult Swim. “It’s my life,” he added, expressing a sincere sentiment.
Variety spoke with Ouweleen about Adult Swim’s international expansion plans, and almost inevitably Genndy Tartkovsky, ahead of his Annecy Studio Focus, where Tartakovsky introduced a new show for Adult Swim and the Annecy audience, having made the last season of “Samurai Jack ” and “Primal ” by the company.
Where do you see Adult Swim internationally in a year or two?
Ouweleen: We already do shows that come from different countries. “YOLO” from Australia, “Women Wearing Shoulder Pads” animated in Mexico and we have “Rick and Morty: The Anime”. But we really want to see Adult Swim originals coming from anywhere in the world and to [creative talent] not trying to give us an American show.
So, would you be interested in producing French talent?
Ouweleen: Hopefully. Part of the audience we address today in the room of our Studio Focus are first -time creators, new creators. What are the shows on Adult Swim?
And would you co-produce with French companies?
Ouweleen: Our bias is more direct with talent, but whatever. Anyway. And then deploy that content globally. It has to work for a global audience. Its global talent for global use, not a regional approach to release.
How can new talent introduce Adult Swim?
Ouweleen: The creators of “Common Side Effects,” which we premiered in Annecy on Wednesday, were asked if they bought into the idea at festivals. I said, ‘Let me try to help answer that for us. In animation, and especially adult animation, you don’t have to wait for a festival to come out. Just introduce us and we want to hear. It should be relatively easy, at least, for us to see what your idea is and decide whether to spend some time talking about it or not.
I have the feeling that in Europe young talents are used to pitching face to face…
Ouweleen: What we’re going to explain today on Adult Swim Studio Focus is how to get involved is through our program Smalls [of two-minute shorts, like Joe Cappa’s “Haha You Clowns”].
What advice would you give talent about what to release?
Ouweleen: Don’t come to us and say, ‘I wrote a whole season.’ Don’t give us the fully baked cake because you’ve never done it before. Let us help you with the cake. You know we won’t help you write it, but we will advise and guide you. My hope is that over the next few years we build a relationship with the community here [in France] so we can find a Genndy [Tartakovsky] from elsewhere. Not an individual Genndy [clone]but a Genndy level of person.
And would you seek to form the kind of relationship you have with Genndy?
Ouweleen: We’ve known each other since we were 24, 25 years old. I was the creative director of “Dexter’s Laboratory” promotions. I might choke awkwardly here. It is so in our DNA. We never talk about it explicitly, but I think for him and for me and for everyone at Adult Swim, it’s really, at the end of the day, about working with people who you love and whose work you respect and then great things come out of it. out of that. And so, strangely, we try to approach it this way: Who do we want to be with? And then the thing happens.
You form a relationship with the talent and hope to have money for them to do what they want.
Ouweleen: That’s well said. That’s exactly right.
Is the international release of Max a game changer for Adult Swim?
Ouweleen: We are linear in the US and linear in Latin America on three channels. With Max all over the world, we have been wherever Max has been distributed. We may be the only media entity that, when we launch in the US in a linear format, the show goes out globally, day after day, in other languages, wherever we are. With Max sweeping Europe this summer, it’s perfect timing because our fan base has been frustrated. They didn’t know how to take our shows abroad if they knew about them. So now is the perfect week to be here.
Do you see adult animation, especially series, starting to flourish abroad and in Europe, for example?
Ouweleen: Yes I do. Especially as there are so many excellent international schools, and particularly in France. Everyone has been really good at preschool and children’s animation here for decades, but they’ve spent less time thinking about adult animation.
But is this changing now?
Ouweleen: I felt at the last two Annecy Festivals that the attention is now shifting a bit and there is more emphasis on adult animation. And we want to partner with people to enable that and help them figure that out, because the way they approach children’s animation doesn’t compare to adults….
One of the biggest revolutions in animation will be international adult series.
Ouweleen: Yes, it has been latent for a long time.
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