Two weeks ago, I showed Sausage Party to a couple of friends and tweeted about how it still holds up six years later thanks to its clever script and talented voice cast, suggesting that Sony should make a sequel to the R-rated animated movie and sell it to a streamer.
Well, lo and behold, that is exactly what Sony’s TV unit has done, as another Party is on the way — this one an eight-course Amazon series that brings back Frank (Seth Rogen) and Brenda (Kristen Wiig), among others.
Sausage Party: Foodtopia is currently in production at the streamer, and in addition to Rogen and Wiig, the series will feature the voices of original cast members Edward Norton, Michael Cera, and David Krumholtz, who will be joined by franchise newcomers Will Forte, Sam Richardson, Natasha Rothwell, and Yassir Lester.
Plot details remain under wraps, but I’m willing to bet that Foodtopia is a sequel of sorts, as I can’t imagine the point of going back to a time when Frank and Brenda were un-woke, so to speak. While there could certainly be flashbacks to those more innocent times, we have to see what life is like for them with the knowledge of their intended purpose.
While I’m glad that Norton’s Sammy Bagel Jr. is back, because he was a personal favorite, I’m very curious whether Krumholtz will continue to voice Kareem Abdul Lavash, who is, obviously or not, of Palestinian descent, whereas Krumholtz is not. Could Lester, who was born to a Palestinian father, be taking over that role? Stay tuned…
“Film used to be the superior art form to television, and we humbly reached the pinnacle of what can be achieved with film in our remarkable opus, Sausage Party,” Rogen and Evan Goldberg said in a joint statement. “But now that film is completely dead and TV is the forever-king of entertainment, we’ve decided to continue the epic adventures of our culinary crew in the soon-to-be-legendary televised masterpiece Sausage Party: Foodtopia. It’s got all the heart, double the puns, and triple the food-on-food sex. In other words, it’s exactly what the world needs right now.”
“The original Sausage Party was an incredibly hilarious, outrageous, one-of-a-kind entry into the world of animation,” said Vernon Sanders, head of global television for Amazon Studios. “We are thrilled to collaborate again with Seth, Evan, and their team at Point Grey, as well as our partners at Annapurna Television and Sony Pictures Television, to offer a new look into this world that will be brought to life so vividly for our global Prime Video customers.”
“The original film was another irreverent comedy from the brilliant comedic minds of Seth and Evan,” said Sony Co-President Jason Clodfelter. “When Annapurna, Seth and Evan approached us to wholly reboot the project as a TV series we were thrilled to be a part of the collaboration and equally excited to have Prime Video as our partner. We look forward to the fanfare around Sausage Party: Foodtopia which promises to be a hit.”
The original Sausage Party movie grossed $140 million worldwide on a reported production budget of just $19 million — far cheaper than many animated movies. Rogen and Goldberg co-wrote the movie with Ariel Shaffir and Kyle Hunter, who will serve as executive producers and co-showrunners on Foodtopia.
Conrad Vernon, who co-directed Sausage Party with Rogen and Goldberg, will serve as supervising director on the show in addition to executive producing Foodtopia alongside those two and their Point Grey teammates James Weaver and Alex McAtee. Annapurna Television’s Megan Ellison and Patrick Chu also executive produce alongside Andrew Millstein.
Sausage Party: Foodtopia instantly becomes one of the series I’m most excited for, and not just on Amazon, but on all of streaming. Let’s just hope that the Party planners bring the same thoughtfulness to this series that they did to the movie, because I’d hate to see these foods go stale due to a lack of preparation.
