King Features and Jim Henson Co Partner for Häger the Horrible
King Features and The Jim Henson Company, have announced they are partnering to produce a new animated family sitcom series inspired by the popular comic strip, Hägar the Horrible.
The new series will follow the hardworking Viking family led by a larger than life hero, Hägar, who can’t quite understand how the society he once understood is changing around him. Eric Ziobrowski, producer and writer for the ABC sitcomFresh Off the Boat andwriter for comedy series includingAmerican Dad! andDon’t Trust the B—- in Apartment 23, is on board to write the new Hägar series.Lisa Henson, CEO and president of The Jim Henson Company, and Halle Stanford, president of television for The Jim Henson Company, will executive produce, along with C.J. Kettler, president of King Features.
The series will be brought to life using the Emmy Award-winning Henson Digital Puppetry Studio, a proprietary animation technology that allows Henson’s exceptional puppeteers to manipulate animated characters in real time, allowing for an organic, spontaneous performance.
“As a burly Viking with a tough exterior, Hägaris an enormously sympathetic character who is out of step with the evolving world around him. His village’s cultural zeitgeist is changing, and he is trying to keep up,” said Kettler. “The Jim Henson Company is known for their amazing storytelling and incredible digital puppetry, and we can’t wait to reimagine Hägarwith them and introduce him to next generation audiences together.”
“Hägar is long overdue for his own series, and this new animated family sitcom, set in the rich and hilarious world of Vikings, will continue the tradition of what we do best at The Jim Henson Company,” said Henson. “Hägar is such a well-established, evergreen character and audiences immediately know and love him. Dik Browne’s comic will be a delightful and irreverent playground for our digital puppetry studio.”
Hägarwas created in 1973 by Dik Browne and quickly became a mainstay on the funny pages, breaking records as the fastest growing comic strip ever. Today, the strip features daily original content created by Browne’s sons Chris and Chance Browne, which is distributed by King Features to content publishers around the world, reaching more than 80 million people in over 50 countries.
Hägar the Horrible is one of several properties King Features is currently developing for television and film as it looks to both adapt its iconic comic strip properties for today’s culture and build out its portfolio of properties it represents outside of the core comic strip arena. Up next for King Features is the highly anticipated adaptation of global video game phenomenon Cuphead, which will make its streaming debut next year on Netflix as The Cuphead Show!
