Fox Previews ‘Son of Zorn’ This Sunday, Jason Sudeikis Voices And Cheryl Hines Stars In The Half-Animated Show
Fox gets a jump on the 2016 fall TV schedule with a preview of the half animated/half live-action comedy Son of Zorn this Sunday. Jason Sudeikis voices the animated Zorn (aka the Defender of Zephyria) while Cheryl Hines plays his live-action ex-wife in this crazy new sitcom created by Phil Lord and Chris Miller.
While Zorn is a hero in Zephryria where everything in animated, he is more of a nuisance in Orange County, California, where his son and ex-wife lives. In Zorn’s mind, his family should just reconnect and operate as they once were before he ran off to battle. Since he’s been gone, his son Alangulon (Alan for short) has grown up and is now 17 years old. His wife Edie has moved on and is engaged to Craig (played by Tim Meadows) who is an online psychology professor and good role model for Alan. What could be a soul-crushing experience for a lowly human inspires the decapitator of the dark herdsmen of Grith. Zorn vows to never give up and win back the love of his family.
Unfortunately, making things right with his family isn’t Zorn’s only problem. He has to fit in modern society too. Soon though, Zorn finds an apartment and takes a nine-to-five job of selling industrial soap. His boss Linda (Artemis Pebdani) appreciates that he is hard worker, but would like it if he could turn down his enthusiasm a bit.
Son of Zorn really has two crews creating the show; one for live-action and the other for the animation team. Lord and Miller have experience working with animated characters. They served as executive producers for The LEGO Movie as well as The Last Man On Earth, and Sudeikis is no stranger to the animated world either as he has voiced the character of Red in The Angry Birds Movie. As for the Hanna-Barbera “look” to the animation in Son of Zorn, that honor goes to Chris Prynoski and the Titmouse team who is also working on Nerdland, a full-length animation theatrical project to be released later this year. However, these two teams rarely work together on the show.
“We do send the technical director out to the set when they shoot to make sure that we can pull off whatever idea we have for the show,” says Prynoski. “The director, Eric Appel, comes from animation so he’s really cognizant of it.”
Prynoski told Deadline recently that he’s thrilled to be working on Son of Zorn. “It’s got this 80s feel to the animation that’s somewhere between Thundercats, He-man, and Thundarr the Barbarian mixed with the live action. It was interesting for us deciding how much we were trying to replicate the animation from those kind of shows and how much we were just trying to service the comedy of what needs to happen in a scene. They have to make the audience believe that this main character, who is animated, is real otherwise the show doesn’t work.”
.@franklinavenue chats with #SonOfZorn producers about making the non-traditional sitcom https://t.co/QbErcXZ4uT @SonOfZorn @FOXTV
— IndieWire (@IndieWire) September 8, 2016
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While Son of Zorn may look like a nice family comedy, be forewarned. The partially animated tale is more suitable for grown-ups than children as sex is mentioned a lot and a giant bird is slaughtered in the pilot episode. Son of Zorn is scheduled to air after the NFL game this Sunday at 8:00 p.m. on Fox and then will settle into its regular show time of 8:30 p.m. on September 25th.
[Image via Fox]
