November 11th, 2021 
Jackson Murphy 
Josh Gordon has collaborated with Will Speck on several feature films (including Blades of Glory and Office Christmas Party) and they have a few more on the way. Currently, Gordon and Speck serve as co-creators of Marvel’s Hit-Monkey, a new adult animated action series premiering this Wednesday Nov. 17 on Hulu. In this Animation Scoop Q&A, Gordon discusses jumping into the Marvel universe and working with Ted Lasso himself, Jason Sudeikis.
Jackson Murphy: I’ve seen the first few episodes and the experience for me is: it feels like I’m watching a big live-action movie, but the show happens to be animated. How did you want to approach this show?
Josh Gordon: It’s funny: coming out of the movie space, I think we write and ultimately direct with that kind of scope in mind. We really wanted it to have a cinematic, big feel. That’s what’s so amazing about doing it as an animated show because it allowed us to dig into these epic Japanese alps and Tokyo underworld and all these different environments that would’ve been almost too big to achieve in a movie about a character that’s kind of obscure.
JM: Hit-Monkey is a newer character in the Marvel world. How do you feel like he fits into the Marvel TV and film world that we’ve seen over the last decade and a half, and also how does he stand out and feel kind of unconventional?
JG: He fits in because obviously he was a limited run (from 2010) and he definitely was on the peripheries of the Marvel world. But like all cool characters within that universe, he somehow found his way to the center. He started to run as a fellow traveler to Deadpool. There’s amazing episodes of Spider-Man that talk about him. And he was folded in because I think he was, in a weird way, so unique and not like a lot of other characters. In the way that the larger Marvel universe (not necessarily the MCU)… is able to have this diversity of tone and scope of characters, he definitely fits into that.
And it was an amazing opportunity that we were given by the Marvel Television people to pick him out of pretty much relative obscurity and create a whole show around him. We had been obsessed with him for 10 years and a lot of our friends have been obsessed with him for 10 years. We kept pitching it, and everybody at Marvel’s like, “We get it. It’s really cool.” The team over at Marvel Television was like, “Yeah. Let’s run with it.” So it was a pretty unique opportunity to take a more obscure, tonally more out there character, definitely R-rated, definitely harder than you’re used to seeing in a lot of the Marvel stuff. It was a great opportunity.
JM: What you’re saying reminds me a little bit of Rocket Raccoon and the Guardians of the Galaxy. That whole gang and him as a character: look at what they did. And look at what you do with this show. It is a wild show when it comes to the violence. This is not for kids at all! Does some of what you animated even shock you?
JG: Yes. And this is what was so amazing about working with the animators. We wrote it and then it would come back in its rough form, and you’d go, “Whoa. Okay. We’re going there, huh?” And the great thing was Marvel and everybody were like, “Yeah.” We don’t wanna make the watered down version of this, so let’s go for it. There were certainly a few things that got cut, but for the most part it really survived pretty intact. We were pretty psyched about that.
JM: Some wild, intense sequences in it. And you’ve got some big names in the voice cast, including Jason Sudeikis as Bryce. How were you able to shape this complex character with him? There are layers to this character.
JG: That was really one of the centerpieces of the show: doing this badass revenge saga with all the characters, but also trying to tell deeper stories with all of them. We really got lucky with Jason, George Takei, Olivia Munn and Ally Maki. All these actors are such good actors with such range. And we tried to write characters that were really complex. And Bryce is a pretty tortured, complex guy. In a lot of ways, he’s the bad guy, and it’s sort of him realizing, “Oh I’m the bad guy. I’m the person that did all these horrible things in my life and I’m coming to really regret them.” That gives that character his watchability, his likability – you sort of empathize for this guy, even though you see the destruction that he causes both in Monkey’s life and in the lives of pretty much everybody he touches.
And Jason as an actor… we’ve always been huge fans of his. One of the things that he’s so good at is: he can play this very funny, witty, sometimes snarky character, but at his core he’s actually a really decent, likable guy (as you can now see on Ted Lasso). He’s really able to walk that line of creating characters that have depth and also are funny and drivers of comedy. That was really important to us.
JM: And what’s really interesting is that Bryce drops nearly as many pop culture references as Ted Lasso does!
JG: Right?! (laughs)
JM: Do you think that Bryce and Ted Lasso could get along?
JG: I think Ted Lasso would be really polite and nice to Bryce and probably walk away from him immediately.
JM: (laughs) And you mentioned Olivia Munn. She has been part of the Marvel world for quite a while now, with roles in Iron Man 2 and X-Men: Apocalypse. Could you tell in working with her [that] her love of Marvel really came through?
JG: We did. This is our second project with her. She’s always been that cool fan that can spout off every detail of every character. She really, when we were doing certain scenes, actually helped shape some of them. She’s an encyclopedia of that stuff. So that was really helpful. But she’s also a great actress and a great voice actress. She was really able to add depth to the character of Akiko, who’s a pretty complex character. She, in many ways, has the biggest arc of the season. That was really important for us to get her for the role, and luckily she said “Yes”.
JM: To public knowledge this series has been about three years in the making. Obviously with what you’ve told me you and Will Speck have wanted to make this for a little bit longer than that. I know there were some things going on at Marvel during this time, with Marvel TV going into Marvel Studios. There were people online, when the trailer for this show came out, who said, “Oh great! This show is here. It’s actually made.” From your perspective, was the show in any danger, or did you always feel like you were safe?
JG: We never felt it. It’s one of those things when you’re in the bubble of making something: you hear rumors and you hear mumblings, but we were pretty far into the process when that changeover happened. Marvel liked the show, and they let us continue with it. And in many ways it was a dream project because we were left, largely, to our own devices. We didn’t have a lot of meddling (not that they’re meddlers) but there was a good, creative support that continued from the original people at Marvel Television straight into the Marvel Studios folks. You would only get notes of, “Yeah. This is cool. Keep going.” It was a pretty seamless transition. The other thing that’s kind of funny for people online is: Marvel’s an incredibly secretive company, by necessity. They don’t talk about the projects they’re making while they’re making them. Everybody’s a little surprised (“Oh, it’s still going!”) But it wasn’t like they were gonna talk about the project while it was still under the tarp. In a lot of ways it’s good because we came up and sort of surprised people.
JM: Yes. Glad you have that support. And you’re sticking with animation for a little bit. You’re making a movie called Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile, based on the book, which I guess is gonna be a live-action/animation combo movie, right? What can you tell me about that at this point?
JG: We’re shooting it right now. We’re really excited about it. It’s based on this beautiful children’s book from the ’60s. It’s a live-action/CG hybrid, so it’ll be a lot like Paddington in that way, where we’re shooting it all in the real world but the character of Lyle is this incredibly sophisticated CG creature that inhabits it. It stars Javier Bardem, Constance Wu and a whole host of other really, really amazing actors. It’s really beautiful. We’ve been shooting it in New York and we’re shooting it here right now in Atlanta. And it comes out next Thanksgiving.
JM: Fantastic. When Hit-Monkey quickly becomes a hit for Hulu and Marvel… what do you want your next chapter in the Marvel universe to be?
JG: That’s really interesting. There’s a couple projects that we’ve flirted with over the years. Some of them have been filtered into the larger universe. So I can’t talk about them, but there’s definitely a couple projects that we’ve been in conversations with – that we’ve been excited about and that hopefully get made. This was our first Marvel experience, and it was amazing. The fanbase, the depths of the universe, the depths of the characters, it’s a really exciting world to be part of and it’s definitely something we’d like to continue.
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