Robot Chicken is back with a brand-new special titled Self-Discovery, which follows the Robot Chicken Nerd as he embarks on a journey to find himself. The long-running stop-motion animation show is in its 20th year, and its creators are still finding ways to keep it relevant. Nothing is safe from Robot Chicken's cutting humor, and the show has taken digs at the likes of Star Wars, Barbie, and Transformers over the years.
The Best War Games recently caught up with Robot Chicken's co-creators Seth Green and Matthew Senreich. They explained how the show's initial success caught them off guard, and how their relationship with the show's fan base has remained consistent throughout. Senreich also explained how a younger set of new writers help to keep the show fresh.
Robot Chicken Has Consistently Maintained a Strong Relationship With its Audience
Since it first debuted, Robot Chicken has won six Emmy Awards and aired over 200 episodes. Neither Green nor Senreich anticipated anything like the success the show has found. Both of them feel that one of the key components of its success is the strong relationship the creators and writers have consistently shared with the show's audience. Green explained,
''I feel like our relationship with the audience has been consistent from the beginning, and it was the thing that Matt and I first really attached to when we started making the show. These were just jokes that we thought were funny among a niche group of paper enthusiasts. Nobody thought this stuff was cool. We were talking about all this stuff that we got our asses kicked for liking in high school. So we didn't expect to get over a million viewers in our first season. We didn't expect to fill out huge convention halls with fans of this show. We just did not see that coming. And now geek culture is massive!''
Robot Chicken Remains Relevant Today
The fact that Green and Senreich are both 20 years older than when they first created Robot Chicken has not stopped the show from remaining culturally relevant. This is partially due to the fact that they hire a lot of fresh-faced writers who are able to harness their generation's pop culture and find clever ways of injecting it into the show. Senreich explained:
''We're older now, but a lot of the people that we hire, it's their first jobs. There’s a new generation of writers there to tell us what is relevant today, and also it's for us to not only learn but experience through their eyes. That's what we really enjoy, seeing those kinds of things and then saying, this is your platform. Take it.''
Both Green and Senreich are confident that the show's transition from full seasons to half-hour specials will aid its longevity. ''We saw what South Park did, with their specials. People don't watch shows in the same way anymore,'' Green explained, ''When you promote something, say, twice a year, you have a greater impact, so we've started focusing on half-hour specials.''
The Robot Chicken Self-Discovery Special airs on Sunday, July 20th on Adult Swim.
- Release Date
- 2005 - 2022
- Network
- Adult Swim
- Showrunner
- Matthew Senreich
- Directors
- Tom Sheppard
- Writers
- Breckin Meyer, Hugh Davidson, Brendan Hay, Dan Milano, Erik Weiner, Geoff Johns, Matthew Libman, Hugh Sterbakov, Jordan Allen-Dutton, Kevin Shinick, Matthew Ireland Beans, Charles Horn, Zeb Wells, daniel libman, Seth Green, Matthew Senreich, Mike Fasolo, Tom Root, Doug Goldstein, Andrew Ti, Milana Vayntrub, Deirdre Devlin, Harmony McElligott, Michael Poisson
Cast
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Seth GreenVarious (voice) -
Matthew SenreichVarious
