When it comes to showbiz nowadays, sometimes weird just works, and the blockbuster success of the CGI/live-action The Lego Movie in 2014 is a perfect example of something that probably shouldn't have worked on the big screen and did. The success was proof enough that the minds behind the madness knew what they were doing, and so it should come as no huge surprise that Fox has granted Lego Movie writer-directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller a season order for their newest creation.
The comedy series will be entitled Son of Zorn and it will follow the story of intergalactic warrior Zorn, who returns to Earth after ten years away to try to reconnect with his son and ex-wife while also adjusting to a normal existence. He discovers that a mundane life of trying to bond with a child is much more difficult than war on his mystical distant home planet of Zephyria. If that’s not a crazy enough premise, Phil Lord and Chris Miller will be drawing from their experiences on The Lego Movie and splitting the characters between animated and live-action.
Zorn will be the main animated character, voiced by Jason Sudeikis of Saturday Night Live fame. His live-action son Alan will be played by Johnny Pemberton of 21 Jump Street, and ex-wife Edie will be played by Cheryl Hines of Curb Your Enthusiasm. Tim Meadows (also of Saturday Night Live) will appear as well.
There’s no word just yet of how many episodes will be ordered for this first season of Son of Zorn. Reed Agnew and Eli Jorne have written the pilot and will serve as showrunners. As executive producers of the former FX series Wilfred, about a guy and the talking dog that only he hears, Agnew and Jorne are more than familiar with working on series that exist way outside of the box.
It does seem that Son of Zorn will fall closer to the Mary Poppins version of including animation against a live-action backdrop than the Lego Movie being predominantly animated. From the sound of things, however, the ratio of animated to live-action will be just about as far as comparisons between Son of Zorn and Mary Poppins can go.
With Phil Lord and Chris Miller of The Lego Movie executive producing, Reed Agnew and Eli Jorne of Wilfred running the show, director/producer Eric Appel of existing Fox series Brooklyn Nine-Nine on board, and a star-studded cast of expert comics, Son of Zorn promises to be a one-of-a-kind series well worth a watch. Hopefully, it will also be worth the wait. Son of Zorn is scheduled to debut on Fox for the 2016 – 2017 television season.
In the meantime, we can always just rewatch The Lego Movie a few dozen extra times. Who knows? Maybe after hitting double digits on the film, “Everything Is Awesome” will stop haunting our dreams.
