Seth Rogen, Sarah Silverman Headlining New Animated Series For HBO Max

Comedians Seth Rogen and Sarah Silverman will be teaming up on an animated project aimed at adults for the new streaming service HBO Max. Per a report by The Hollywood Reporter on Friday, Rogen and Silverman will co-star in the new cartoon series Santa Inc.

According to THR‘s Rick Porter, an eight-episode production run has been greenlit for the forthcoming WarnerMedia streaming platform. The series was created by Shrill showrunner Alexandra Rushfield and is a joint-production from Lionsgate and Point Grey Pictures — the latter being Rogen’s production company shared with friend and writer/producer Evan Goldberg.

Point Grey is currently in the midst of a massive, multi-platform content deal with Lionsgate.

Santa Inc. will chronicle the exploits of Candy Smalls (voiced by Silverman), who is the highest-ranking female elf at the North Pole. When Santa Claus (Rogen) sees his successor poached away by Amazon, Smalls makes it her mission to realize a long-held dream of becoming the first female Santa in Christmas history. Although it reads like a plot typical of family-friendly animated films, the Rogen and Silverman-led series promises to be anything but.

In his statement to THR, Lionsgate’s head of scripted development, Scott Herbst, praised the comedic chops of Rogen and Silverman and opined that Santa Inc. would bring the holidays to HBO Max in novel fashion.

“Sarah and Seth are the perfect comedy duo for this empowering and very funny animated series shepherded by the hysterical Alexandra Rushfield. We look forward to diving into the world of animation with our Point Grey partners, and to bring the holidays to HBO Max in a totally unexpected and fresh way.”

For her part, Rushfield has drawn nearly universal praise from entertainment critics for her stewardship of Shrill, a Hulu series centered on an overweight young woman who wants to change her life, but not necessarily her body, as she navigates her career as a journalist — and a penchant for landing with bad boyfriends. That series is based on a book by Linda West, and currently holds a positive score of 87 percent on the review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes.

Meanwhile, Rogen recently completed work on the upcoming comedy An American Pickle, and Silverman participated in the 2019 revival of Crank Yankers, the classic Comedy Central series in which she performed real-life prank calls as the popular character Hadassah Guberman.

Silverman also made headlines recently by participating in Gal Gadot’s widely-panned celebrity ‘Imagine’ video. Unlike many of the other participants, the comedian didn’t take herself — or her singing — seriously in the video.