The notoriously difficult and fan-favorite video gameCupheadis making the jump to TV withThe Cuphead Show.The show follows the titular Cuphead (Tru Valentino), an anthropomorphic cup who just loves to get himself and his brother Mugman (Frank T. Todaro) in trouble. Like the video game, the big appeal of the cartoon is its stunning animation, which is hugely inspired by classic cartoons of the 1930s by the likes of the Fleischer brothers and even Walt Disney, featuring traditional rubber hose animation, stereoscopic animation, and plenty of references to keep animation enthusiasts happy - all while delivering some wacky animated adventures.
Ahead of the show’s debut on Netflix on February 18, we had the chance to sit down with Executive ProducerDave Wassonand Co-Executive ProducerCosmo Segursonabout translating the game into a TV series, finding the right balance between classic and modern, and springing an overarching story into standalone episodes.
Collider: When you first started working on the show, what was on your list of top priorities?
COSMO SEGURSON: Well, we knew we want it to be a lot easier than the game. Number one.
DAVE WASSON: Right. That’s right. I think we knew we wanted to be true to what was so great about the game. The beautiful style, the great characters, the music, the watercolor backgrounds, all the stuff that the video game itself was based on, all the 1930s rubber hose style. So, we knew we had to live up to the promise of the game. And then I think to create really fun, interesting characters, personality wise.
Collider: From there, how do you get into picking what stories to tell in this first season? Because the show isn’t particularly based on the story of the game.
WASSON: there’s a book, a little like video book that starts off the game and sets up Cuphead and Mugman. So, we sort of took the bread crumbs that the Moldenhauers left us, where it’s like, they live in the woods with Elder Kettle, he’s their elderly caretaker, they’re brothers, and then Cuphead kind of longs for more, and that’s how he stumbles on the Devil’s Casino and is willing to gamble and all that. And then Mugman, it’s like… So it seemed like, Cuphead is this wild, reckless, impulsive, fun guy that doesn’t really think about consequences. And they’re like, “Okay, if that’s him, then who does that pair well with comedically?” And it seems like somebody who’s a little bit more level headed, someone who does consider consequences, and someone who is a result of spending all their time with this maniac, maybe has become a little neurotic over the years. So, that’s was our springboard for those two guys.
And then Elder Kettle, he’s sort of their parental figure. He’s looking after them out in the woods and like, I’m a dad myself, so I know what that’s like. I know there’s a lot of… There’s the nice version of what it is to be a dad, but the real version is just a lot of yelling. I have two sons, it’s like, “Stop setting the couch on fire. Stop touching his face.” So, we thought that would be a funny way to go with Kettle, to have someone that’s more realistic version of what it is to be a parent in a funny way.
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Most animated shows nowadays, particularly on streaming, follow a serialized format with a lot of lore and an overarching story. Most ofThe Cuphead Showis episodic, how was it to work with this format?
WASSON: We’re big fans of short subject cartoons, and those all tended to be standalone. So, I think our first idea was that we were going to make a bunch of standalone shorts, but then we started thinking about the fact that it’s going on a streaming service. And so, the individual episodes would feel kind of complete and of themselves, it seemed like a fun idea to do an overarching story with the Devil also. So, we have the best of both worlds. We were able to make some really fun standalone shorts, and then also have a running story that goes through it as well. So, it was like getting to have our cake and eat it too.
SEGURSON: And I feel like when we first started on the gig, I mean, I had Netflix and was watching stuff, but then I really started thinking about, “Okay, how am I viewing the streaming media?” Because it still feels pretty new to me, that you may watch an entire season in a weekend or whatever. So, we knew we had to have stuff that would connect it, so you’d want to keep watching to see what happens. So, there are cliff hangers, which has been really fun.
Given we know it’s a 36-episode series, how much work did you do on latter seasons while breaking this one?
WASSON: You know, we had to do both from a practical point of view. But we had a couple months, three months, something like that, to just focus on the writing. And we had this big board, a big thumbnail, or what do you call that? Bulletin board. And we had cards where we would pin up like, “Okay, we know we want to have a Devil episode here, and then we want to have a couple of standalones, and then we want to have another… We totally plotted it out. And then we know we want Chalice to show up here. So, even before we… Sometimes we didn’t even necessarily have a whole idea figured out. We just knew where we wanted to drop these episodes in. So, it was almost like, you start sketching and then you fill the drawing in more and more, and get tighter and tighter. And that’s how we plotted the season.
And so, all the way through, we were always thinking all of it as one big thing that we were working on. But then, as we started bringing on board artists, then we would have to, “Okay, we’d stop working on the big picture and then get into the details of this particular story and really flash that out.” And then we’d go back to the big picture again. So, it was like going from micro viewing, to back to macro viewing, back to micro and so forth.
Can you talk about crafting the humor for the show, because it’s distinct in how it seems both kid-friendly but also kind of adult at times.
SEGURSON: I think Dave and I and our head writer, and our directors, WE all obviously are coming from different places. But we were all able to push ourselves to tell the kinds of stories with these characters that were funny, that was the goal. We never went into a place where we want to explore anyone’s emotions so deeply that it’s not fun to watch. And we really brought our own experiences to a lot of these characters. Great example with Elder Kettle and the kids, like that’s very much Dave Wasson’s relationship with his children.
And then I’m a younger brother to an older sister who really, when I was growing up, was wild. I mean, if she ever reads this, she had a delinquency to her that was really fun and was constantly getting into trouble. And I was the good kid reading lots of books, but was sneaking out with her and my parents didn’t know. So, I can totally relate to that dynamic. And I think when we’re in the writer’s room, we’re throwing out personal stories and ideas at the wall and not everything stuck, but really, I would say, we were all trying to make each other laugh.
WASSON: Yeah. And the other thing that we were considering, I mean, Netflix bought this to be a show for seven years old and up. But we also know that the major fan base for this game is older. So, we knew we really didn’t want to let the fans down. So, we were writing, in a way, were trying to make it inclusive of everyone. So, you can watch this with your family, and adults will find things that are funny about it that maybe kids won’t get, but there’s also tons of great slapstick comedy and that sort of thing that the kids will really enjoy as well. So, we’re really hoping it transcends the kid space into a more universal space.
When it comes to the animation, how do you do strike that balance of being recognizable for modern audiences, but also hinting at those classic references?
WASSON: I think it’s like if you happen to know that stuff, and you’re a fan of 1930s animation, then I think you’re going to really enjoy this, because there’s lots of Easter eggs, there’s lots of shout-outs to the game and also to other cartoons of the 1930s, like backgrounds and locations. you’re able to see that we’ve used a lot of the techniques that they used back then. So, yeah. I mean, if you’re an animation professor, then it’s like, “Oh my gosh, this is amazing.” But also if you’re like a kid and you’ve never seen any of that stuff, you don’t really need to, it stands on its own, and we’re hoping that actually, it introduces a whole new generation of fans to this style of animation.
SEGURSON: it was important for us not to just make a throwback cartoon, which would’ve been interesting and a challenge. But I think what we did was harder, because we really tried to… You know, we’re inventing a little world here, that we definitely had traces of from the game, but to not just make a Fleischer cartoon. And there’s certainly homages to the classics, to the Fleischer cartoons and to Silly Symphonies. Not even only stylistically visually, but within the kinds of dialogue and the way the voice actors interact, and the way these characters talk, we really wanted to feel authentic from that time.
We watched a lot of those screwball comedies from the ’30s. Especially the Hal Roach stuff. We really just love that stuff, like The Little Rascals. We also watched a lot of Abbott and Costello. There’s so much material from that time to absorb, and we only had so much time to put the project together, but we tried to pinpoint milestones of comedy of that time for sure.
WASSON: Originally, we thought we would probably emulate the rubber hose style a little more loyally than we ultimately ended up doing. But since we were telling character stories, we really needed to be able to act more with these characters. We needed an audience to understand how a character was feeling. And then the ’20s, they hadn’t really delved that deep into a lot of that stuff quite yet. So, I think our style became like a hybrid between 1920s and maybe a little bit more of a modern sensibility, because we needed to really act with these characters.
They’re almost like fever dreams. You’re not even sure what the story is. It’s like characters are just running and someone’s after them, and trees are growing faces, and the ground opens up, and there’s a mouth and they fall in and it’s just almost like a surreal event, more than it is a story. We love that stuff, but we did realize like, “Look, we’re telling stories, so we had to be real strategic about when we could do like a morphing joke. Like we’re a character, or suddenly an inanimate object grows a face for no reason, because often, it would kind of pulled you out of the story that we were telling.
