Ever wondered what Marvel’s M.O.D.O.K. (Mental/Mobile/Mechanized Organism Designed Only for Killing), the company’s villainous floating head, does in his downtime when not striving for world domination and fighting the Marvel Heroes? The answer to this question will be answered soon in the upcoming new animated series on the Hulu streaming service.
The series will star Patton Oswalt as the voice of the head character in the series, as the House of Ideas’ embarks on its first foray into adult animated comedy. The stop-motion series follows M.O.D.O.K., who must balance running AIM and his demanding family; unfortunately, he’s failing on both fronts.
Oswalt is joined by stars Aimee Garcia (Lucifer) as his wife Jodie, Ben Schwartz (Parks and Recreation) as his oddball son Lou, and Melissa Fumero (Brooklyn Nine-Nine) as his daughter Melissa, who shares her father’s striking appearance.
In the pilot episode, it is revealed that M.O.D.O.K. has been a very neglectful husband of late, floundering at work and with his wife, who has found success through her mommy blog-turned-lifestyle brand, a disconnect forces them to reevaluate their relationship.
Alas, things aren’t going any better at work because A.I.M. is on the verge of bankruptcy due to his lackluster leadership. Thus, a Google-like Silicon Valley company named GRUMBL swoops in to acquire M.O.D.O.K.’s evil organization. At first, this seems like a great idea because GRUMBL promises to let M.O.D.O.K. continue what he’s been doing — you know, killing henchmen on a whim and fighting the Avengers as much as he wants. Unfortunately, that’s not what actually happens because M.O.D.O.K. must now deal with things like a board and H.R.
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, executive producer Jordan Blum, who co-created the comedic series with Oswalt, said about the series:
“We obviously love the character as this big villain who is always trying to take over the world and run his evil organization [AIM]. His design by Jack Kirby is so absurd and monstrous that we thought, where does this guy go at night? Does he go home to a house and have all these mundane things he has to do? Does he have a family we never knew about? The more we discussed, the more it just kind of made us laugh, and then we tried to figure out well, what would that family be? Who would marry M.O.D.O.K, and how hard would it be to be his son or to be a daughter in M.O.D.O.K.’s image?”
Blum went on to add,
“If you’re making a show about super villains, you have figure out something more evil [for them to face], so corporations. It seemed like an interesting foe for M.O.D.O.K. to come up again because it’s one thing to try to kill Iron Man, but it’s another when you have all this corporate red tape. He can’t blast his problems away, which is how he solves every problem. It’ll be his greatest test: Can he out-smart a corporation and take back control after he unknowingly gives it away?”
His main adversary will be Austin Van Der Sleet (SNL‘s Beck Bennett), GRUMBL’s “post-merger-integration-consultant” at A.I.M, who elicits quite the reaction from M.O.D.O.K. in the image below.
“Even though Austin always kind of smiles and spews corporate jargon at him, [Austin is] constantly gaslighting and manipulating him as M.O.D.O.K. falls further within the organization. He’s a much more worth adversary than even Captain America for M.O.D.O.K. because it’s a battle of wits between the two,” said Blum.
Blum went on to say about Stoopid Buddy’s work on the stop-motion animation,
“The show can easily move between big-screen action and a “handheld docu-verité style.” Says Blum: “We’ll see the big battles and the big fights, it’s a huge sci-fi Marvel Universe show, but we thought it would be really funny to see [M.O.D.O.K.] dealing with water cooler gossip at A.I.M. shot in this very handheld style and make it feel like you’re working at AIM alongside him and the same with the family, too.
It’s kind of a little inspired by things like Modern Family and The Office, where it just makes you feel like you’re part of the group in the show.”
Marvel’s M.O.D.O.K. doesn’t have a premiere date yet; the show’s producers and cast will be talking about the show at their virtual New York Comic-Con panel Friday at 8:30 p.m. ET/5:30 p.m. PT.