Back in January, I blogged that FOX had plans to dive into the Adult Swim pool with late-night animated comedy programming. Now FOX has announced the first cartoon that will air during that block.
Animation Domination HD, the new animation unit created by FOX, announced in a press release that they bought the rights to the web comic Axe Cop. Axe Cop will premiere as part of FOX's new Saturday late-night Animation Domination HD block, starting at 11:00 p.m. ET, debuting in 2013. So far, FOX's Animation Domination has ordered six 15-minute episodes of the series.
Axe Cop was created by then five-year-old Malachai Nicolle and his 29-year-old brother, Ethan, and chronicles the adventures of an axe-wielding police officer and his loyal team of allies as they fight bad guys. Written by Malachai and drawn by Ethan, the first five installments of Axe Cop were put online on January 25, 2010 and went viral in a matter of days. Three days after AxeCop.com went live, it was featured as Entertainment Weekly's "Site of the Day," and the series quickly became an Internet meme.
Whether or not FOX is successful with this new block of programming is hard to predict. In 2010, FOX tried burning off episodes of Sit Down, Shut Up on Saturday nights, ending up with small ratings. Plus, other web phenoms have met limited success when they jumped to TV, for instance Lil' Bush and Atom TV on Comedy Central. However, viral sensation Annoying Orange was picked up by Cartoon Network, and web series China, IL airs on Adult Swim.
Is FOX jumping on a trend or really looking to build a Saturday night audience? Regardless, they won't have much competition, but duplicating the cool factor of Adult Swim will be difficult.
Picture courtesy of Twentieth Century Fox.
Follow Me on Twitter | Join Me on Facebook
No comments:
Post a Comment