July 1st, 2024 
Jackson Murphy 
This Thursday July 4th, you might have some hamburgers and hot dogs to celebrate Independence Day. And then next Thursday July 11th, you can watch them come alive on Prime Video in Sausage Party: Foodtopia, the adult animated comedy series follow-up to the hit 2016 movie. Stars Seth Rogen, Kristen Wiig, Michael Cera and Edward Norton return, along with the film’s co-writers, Ariel Shaffir and Kyle Hunter. They serve as co-creators, showrunners and EPs of Foodtopia and join me for this Animation Scoop Q&A. (This interview was edited for length and clarity.)
Jackson Murphy: Congratulations on this. I’ve seen the first couple episodes. It’s as wild as the movie was, so you guys have done it.
Kyle Hunter: That’s the bar. That’s the bar we’re trying to hit.
JM: Ariel, when the movie came out in 2016, and as you guys were getting ready, doing press, the days counting down to the release, were you genuinely nervous about a big star studded CG animated movie for adults being released nationwide?
Ariel Shaffir: Was I nervous? Not particularly. Well, we had the benefit with the movie coming out… we screened it many times. And so, I got to sit in theaters and see people laugh and gasp and be horrified at the right times. So, I had the sense that it was hopefully going to work.
JM: I was at a screening a couple nights before it opened near where I live… and that final stretch of the movie… audiences were gasping and going crazy. And they’re gonna do it again at home, watching “Foodtopia” on Prime Video. Kyle, it’s been almost eight years since the movie. How long have you been thinking up a follow up?
KH: Eight years, exactly. No, I think… after the movie came out and it was a relative success, I would say… enough to think if we wanted to make a sequel, which would have been a movie. But as we sort of started talking about what it would be, we had such wild ideas. (laughs) We had so many that we felt like if we expanded this into a TV universe, then it could just keep going and sort of be developed in a different way. So truly after the movie came out, we were like, “We should do this.” But that’s how long CG animation takes. (laughs) Eight years for it to come out. We’re pretty proud of it.
Kyle Hunter and Ariel Shaffir join Jackson Murphy
JM: Here it is, Foodtopia! And Ariel, what I love in the first episode is that you bring us right into the action. We’re at the supermarket. There’s a lot going on. What were your goals with wanting to just get right into it here with this show?
AS: Well, because the movie ends with the foods fighting back against the humans, we could have made an entire show about a big war between foods and humans. But we thought. “Let’s just blow past that, get it over with, make it very clear, very quickly, that food won the war.” And then it’s kind of like the day after the war. “Now what?” is the vibe. We thought that was a richer territory to explore, story wise.
JM: Kyle, you have director Conrad Vernon coming back for this as well, and I love the point of view. When you look at the sequences, it’s the point of view of the food… very, very tiny food. What is that collaboration like with Conrad, and what are the challenges of giving us that perspective?
KH: We love working with Conrad. He directed the movie and is a big part of the movie’s success, as well as the TV show, we hope. I think that’s another reason why we want them out of the store. In the movie the store still felt like a world to them. But once you bust out of the doors you really do feel the scale size difference and how massively difficult it would be to get around, let alone start a society. How would that work? We really wanted the camera and the audience to feel part of that and feel the vastness of the world. It sort of ups the stakes… and like the movie, it’s structured like an adventure action comedy. It really helps with the stakes of what they have to endure.
JM: The stakes are really high for our characters, Frank and Brenda and Barry and everybody. Ariel, how was it coming up with some of the challenges they face? We have rain in the first episode and bleeding over into the second one. And that’s a major challenge for them. What’s the writer’s room in deciding, “Okay, this is what we want them to face. This is how we want them to face it… and then bringing the humor into all of that as well”?
AS: It’s a funny headspace to put yourself in. We just kind of imagine ourselves or imagine food out in the world, and it was truly just us kind of batting around ideas, like what would be the scariest things for these foods to face? What elements, what animals? Anything like that. You just come up with a list and then think which ones out of these lists are the most funny and shocking and will bear the most fruit. And then you pick one or two or three or four.
JM: It is funny. It is shocking in the best possible way. And what’s awesome about Sausage Party Foodopia, Kyle, is that you brought back many of the cast members. It’s not always the case when you have a big theatrical animated feature that those A-listers return for the series follow up. You’ve got Rogen, Wiig, Cera, and the hilarious Norton, who gets to do a lot of comedy in that second episode. So, how was it collaborating with them… getting them back into the mindset of these very particular and memorable food characters?
KH: Honestly that’s the best part — when you get those people in a booth and you can just sort of riff with them. Or they’re doing the riffing and you’re pitching the occasional thing in there. These are self-generating comedic geniuses. So it’s pretty nice to be back in a room with them. We feel super fortunate that they came back to the TV show after all these years. But I think they have a love for it too, and it wasn’t that difficult to invite them back and have them back. We also have Sam Richardson and Will Forte. We’re incredibly fortunate to have them on here. A lot of the time they’re in the booth, they’re coming up with things. And then we’re changing the storyboards now based on a riff they go on. That is an important part of the process, especially early on. At some point you can’t change the animation. They have to stop. But early on, that is sort of how you find the show — through them and finding their characters that way.
JM: Sure. It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity to voice food talkin’ dirty! Ariel, one of the other things I like is that the sequences are kind of continuous. Sometimes in animated shows, it’s a lot of quick edits to different locations. And that kind of helps the feel of a feature as you’re watching this and that kind of seamlessness. Was that pretty intentional of a decision?
AS: Oh yeah, 100%. We kind of approached this as though it’s just like one long movie but being doled out in episodes. We intentionally want to make the sequences feel long and that you’re living in it so that you feel the stakes, the danger, the tension. This is all kind of part of the plan. So I’m glad you felt that way.
JM: I think it absolutely works. And the show is definitely not for kids. Sausage Party is still definitely not for kids. So Kyle, you had Sony Pictures release the movie. You’ve got Prime Video distributing the show. How far did Amazon allow you to push things?
KH: They let us go all the way. (laughs) That was the beauty of working with Sony on the movie and Amazon also, and Annapurna. They really don’t get involved to that degree. They don’t push back that much. I think the reason the movie was successful is because we went to certain places that some other studio notes would have killed, and Amazon has reacted the same way. They want a big, loud, splashy show. And I think that’s what’s been delivered. (laughs)
AS: In the back half of the season, you’ll see how far they allowed us to go.
JM: Whoa, all right. That’s a tease for everyone. So when you guys, honestly, go to a supermarket… how do you look at food? How do you judge food? Do you get these weird thoughts because of what you’ve done with food in the Sausage Party universe?
KH: Do we feel guilt about what we’ve done? Yeah, sure, all the time. (laughs) Our relationship with food hasn’t changed that much, but when we do look at packages and food… the show and the movie are largely built on food puns. And I think that is the thing that keeps cropping up. And you can’t stop, even though we stopped writing the show, those things continue.
AS: I look at food and think, “What kind of voice would this piece of food have?” That’s where my head goes.
JM: And maybe you’ll continue to do that if there’s another chapter in the Sausage Party Foodtopia universe, if we get another season. So we have Sausage Party. What’s your Watch Party gonna be like on July 11th?
KH: Watch party? Not with my daughter. She can’t watch the show. She can watch segments of it. She can watch little snippets, and then that’s about it.
AS: Maybe a heavily edited version of the show is something that we should look into doing for our kids. That’s actually a good idea. Because my kids want to watch it.
KH: I think that’s actually good. We should talk to Amazon about that. That’s great.
AS: We should!
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