'Among Us' showrunner Owen Dennis discusses assembling its A-list cast and steering clear of making an adaptation reliant on dated memes.
Ahead of its premiere on Paramount+, 'Among Us' showrunner Owen Dennis discusses assembling its A-list cast and steering clear of making an adaptation reliant on dated memes.
Way back in 2023, CBS officially announced that its next animated series would be an adaptation of Innersloth’s smash-hit 2018 space murder mystery video gamecrewmates aboard a ship transporting junk across space. Hidden among them is an alien taking them out one by one. Their task is to put their collective noggins together and suss out which of them is the imposter before there are no crewmates left.
) about how the series landed on its eclectic cast of actors, as well as his philosophy for adapting a video game into a television show nearly a decade after it skyrocketed into a global sensation.has an absolutely stacked cast, spanning actors from video games, animated shows, and comedy. The cast includes Yvette Nicole Brown as White.
Assembling the right group to breathe life into little jellybean-looking crewmates proved no small task for Dennis.is that all the characters kind of look the same. They have different outfits, but they look pretty similar, so make sure each voice definitely sounds like a different person,” Dennis said.
“For us, there’s no mouth movement and no faces. Because of that, if you have a whole group of people and they’re all standing there and one of them is talking, you have to know which of them is actually talking without a mouth moving.
” He continued: “It was really important for us to make sure that we get actors who are very good and can express things using comedy, drama, or any direction that we need them to go. And also, their voice is unique enough that I know exactly which person is talking at any given moment.
”needed in assembling a crew of actors to bring its larger-than-life jellybean dudes to life were clear, Dennis admits that even then, it still proved a difficult hump to overcome, which is why he’s especially grateful they landed the stacked cast they did.
“When we landed on who we landed on, it all felt very natural and very good. I’m very happy with everyone we have,” he said.
With the show’s announcement coming three years after the game’s pandemic‑era peak, a cavalcade of internet memes burning their way into the internet’s collective conscience, and video game adaptations being a hit-or-miss venture for die-hards, it wouldn’t be out of line to guess that some fans might harbor a lingering concern that the CBS show might become a dated time capsule of that very specific moment in time. And the radio silence since 2023—followed by a shadow‑drop—likely spiked anxiety for fans who’d half‑forgotten the series was even in development until today’s surprise announcement.
‘ cultural moment had passed—and whether that possibility added pressure to make a show that was prescient rather than tethered to 2020—Dennis didn’t flinch, saying he didn’t let the noise affect him doing his job. That job, in his words, was to “make an animated show based on this video game that is supposed to be funny.
” He then followed up that response with a remark that felt like the modus operandi that any showrunner adapting a video game would be wise to follow.
“Comedies are products of their time. All media is a product of its time. As much as people try to pretend that they’re making something timeless or can last forever, everything is a product of its time. You can’t escape that.
But what can really make something very obviously a product of its time is a lot of referential humor. And references are sort of the lowest tier of joke because it’s not really a joke. It’s just you saying something and then someone else being like, ‘I know that thing. ’ That’s not a joke.
That’s just saying something that somebody knows. ”didn’t lean on referential humor. Instead, the show endeavored to craft jokes that made sense for its characters, situation, and comedic tone, with an emphasis on “no big specific references or anything like that.
” Plus, Dennis pointed out that trying to incorporate pop culture memes, especially in hand-drawn shows like“Animation takes so long to make that if you tried to make a pop culture reference to something right now, by the time it came out, it’s dated as soon as you start doing it because it would be so many years after it came out,” he said. ] to stand on its own.
I think it’s important anytime you’re adapting anything, it has to be something that fans of the thing are going to like, but also it needs to be able to stand completely on its own without having to know the previous works or the meta-narrative around the work or any of that sort of stuff. It has to be completely its own thing. If you can do that, then you can achieve something.
But if you don’t do that, you end up with something that just feels weird, empty, and bizarre. I would hate to work on something like that.
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