Big City Greens Creators To Develop Adult Animation Projects With Disney Under New Deal

Disney’s plan for world dominance is going to have a heavy focus on adult animation. To this day, domestic and international deals for Disney’s 20th Television Animation rakes in hundreds of millions of dollars, so much so that the company has opted to reboot longtime dormant series Futurama and King of the Hill. Kids animation is a tougher sell. Disney literally just future-proofed its way into the hearts and minds of the younger folk with their recent deal with Epic Games because the days of doing it with kids-toons are long over.

Aside from the occasional primetime special, Big City Greens is definitely in the latter market but having just signed a new overall deal with Disney, it looks like show creators Chris and Shane Houghton are thinking about a future in adult animation.

Under the Houghtons’ direction, “Big City Greens,” which debuted in June 2018, has been making kids laugh for four seasons and nearly 100 episodes. It was the No. 2 most-watched kids animated series of 2023, with more than 2 billion hours watched across linear and streaming since it debuted in 2018.* The series follows the offbeat adventures of 10-year-old Cricket Green (voiced by Chris Houghton), a mischievous and optimistic country boy who moved to the big city with his wildly out-of-place family. The show is heavily influenced by the brothers’ childhood growing up in St. Johns, Michigan, a small rural town north of Lansing, also known as the mint capital of the world. Many of the characters are inspired by real-life family members and childhood townsfolk.

The “Big City Greens” franchise will soon expand with a movie, set to premiere this summer. The series content also extends into many of Disney Branded Television’s hit animated short-form series, including “How NOT to Draw,” “Chibi Tiny Tales” and “Broken Karaoke.” Additionally, “Big City Greens” recently collaborated with ESPN for the “NHL Big City Greens Classic” — a live, animated NHL game telecast, powered by volumetric and motion capture technologies — which is returning for a second iteration this year.

The Houghtons are also well-known for creating, writing and illustrating the “Reed Gunther” comic book series about a bear-riding cowboy, which was published by Image Comics. Upon making their foray into television, Chris worked as a storyboard artist for Disney’s “Gravity Falls” and “Wander Over Yonder,” and Shane was an editor for the reality series “Tattoo School.” The brothers also collaborated on “Harvey Beaks,” with Chris serving as a storyboard director and Shane as a staff writer.