Showrunner on why it needed to be animated

Reboots and sequels aren't just surprising in 2024, they're expected. It doesn't matter how popular or little known a series or film is, chances are it will come back. What makes “Everybody Still Hates Chris” unique, however, is that it comes back not only with a new look, but also with a new medium. “I wouldn't have pursued this if it had been a live-action reboot, it was the animated part that was appealing,” showrunner Sanjay Shah told IndieWire.

A big reason for developing this reboot of the 2005 sitcom “Everybody Hates Chris” (which was loosely based on comedian Chris Rock's childhood) as an animated series was to explore the neighborhood. For Shah, who has worked in both the live-action and animation industries, it was an opportunity for different character pairings than we've seen before, to venture into fantasy sequences and look beyond the main Bed-Stuy district. For Shah, this possibility was exciting since the original couldn't really go anywhere else – he cited an episode in which the family tries to vacation outside of New York City but gets stuck at a bus stop, but “now we can see.” , how they undertake this journey.”

“Everybody Still Hates Chris” feels out of time from the start, not only because of the 80s setting and the lack of phones and internet, but also because of the atmosphere of the neighborhood. The realism of the backgrounds and production design has a painterly quality reminiscent of 80s and even 90s cartoons like Hey Arnold, which made their locations feel like real places where people live. The animation team at Eye Animation Productions recreated the look of '80s Brooklyn, right down to the street signs and buses. One goal of the animated reboot was to evoke the time period in which the series is set. The '80s were a notorious time for animation, with budget cuts and limited animation rampant, so it was an opportunity for Shah to make an upscale film. 80's cartoon to evoke the realism of a cartoon-like “King of the Hill” and how it felt like live action but drawn, while also harkening back to the original “Everybody Hates Chris” and its fondness for the expansion of reality through fantasies, cutaways, etc. recalling exaggerated moments and expanding the world through animation.

Even simpler things that destroy the realism or practicality of live action (like a child falling into the sewers in the second episode) can only be done comedically in animation. (According to Shah, this storyline also originally included a scene in which the same child met some radioactive turtles.) But animation not only pushes the imagination to the impossible for comedic effect, it also allows animators to express things, even in live Action actors can't do that, like extreme emotions. “Even if the background suddenly disappears and it's a color map expressing emotion, we can do things in animation that we couldn't otherwise.”

Making “Everybody Still Hates Chris” in 2024 doesn’t mean updating the characters or the story. As Shah says, the goal was always to carry on as if they were episodes from the 2000s, with the only major signal that this is a modern production being the voice of the adult Chris Rock. Just like in the original version, Rock interjects from time to time, talking about his young fictional counterpart and commenting on the plot. While the stories show yesterday, Rock's narrative, and therefore the show as a whole, can speak of today. “The 1980s were a harbinger of things to come, from economic inequality to the rise of right-wing rhetoric,” Shah explained. Therefore, showing the '80s as they were works just as well when it comes to commentary on today as when it comes to the setting being contemporary.

The show also eschews serialization. Binge-watching and streaming have made serialization the norm, but Everybody Still Hates Chris enjoys having each episode be its own thing. “Ultimately for me as an audience it’s about the characters, the family, and we wanted to show more of that,” Shah said. “I think there's also a longing to drop in at any time, without big barriers to entry where you have to watch the whole season to understand what everyone's talking about today, and that was part of the charm of the original.”

That being said, there is one big serialized element, which is that the animated reboot literally picks up where the original left off: Chris receives his GED results and realizes he's failed. This leads to his mother literally hitting him so hard that everything becomes animation. “This took a lot of thought and conversation with Chris, but we realized that there was still some scope for storytelling taking into account real life events,” Shah said. Part of the goal in bringing these characters back was to use a “floating timeline” like “The Simpsons,” where it feels like time is passing and the characters are going through changes, but they're still stuck there, where they started. “I wanted to capture Chris in that time where he's still a black Charlie Brown before his journey to stardom begins,” Shah added. “That’s what we wanted to achieve here.”

“Everybody Still Hates Chris” premieres September 25 on Comedy Central.