Disney XD’s “Future-Worm!” puts a pre-teen twist on time travel

Jim Hill

8 years ago

Over the nearly 15 years that he’d been working in
animation, Ryan Quincy had done a great many things. He’s helped create Emmy
Award-winning episodes of “South Park.” Not to mention “Out There,” that
acclaimed series for IFC.

“But what I hadn’t done was work on anything animated that I
could then show my son, who’s 11, and my daughter, who’s 9,” Quincy recalled
during a recent phone interview. “And that had genuinely begun to bother me.”

“Future-Worm!” creator & executive Ryan Quincy poses with the two central characters
from his new animated series. Copyright Disney Enterprises, Inc. All rights reserved

But then Disney Television Animation reached out to Ryan in
September of 2013. They were in the market for something that was … Well, a
little weird and rough-around-the-edges for Disney XD.

“Now I have always wanted to do a kid’s show. But at the
same time, I really like to draw these monstrous-looking characters &
things. So how did I bring these two things together? I just tapped into my 12
year-old brain,” Quincy continued. “I asked myself – as a kid who watched
entirely too much television when I was growing up – what would I like to see
in a new animated series? And that’s where ‘Future-Worm!’ came from. It’s the
show that I would have loved to watch when I was a kid.”

And Ryan is right. Only someone who could still channel the
way 12 year-old boys actually think could have ever come up with a show like
“Future-Worm!” Which details the adventures of Danny, an enterprising pre-teen
who has built a time-traveling lunch box.

“Mind you, with ‘Future-Worm!,’ I wanted to treat time
travel in a totally ridiculous fashion. So on this show, our characters won’t
be answering questions like who knocked the nose off of the Sphinx or be doing
things like stopping George Washington from chopping down that cherry tree,”
Quincy said. “With ‘Future-Worm!,’ it’s all about how a 12 year-old boy would
actually use time travel. Like repeatedly trying to prevent himself from
slipping food on himself after an embarrassing fall in the school cafeteria.”

And the best part of Disney getting fully behind this absurd
animated series is that Ryan could then channel the might of the Mouse. So if
Quincy wanted “Cosmos” host Neil deGrasse Tyson to come be a recurring
character on “Future-Worm!” and regularly offer Danny advice? Done.

“And then – when we were working on the opening title
sequence of the show — I drew a future version of Danny. And that version of
this character just happened to look like singer / songwriter Paul Williams,”
Ryan recounted. “And I said, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if Paul Williams could do the
voice of this version of that character?’ And then someone at Disney said
‘Well, why don’t we actually ask him?’ So they reached out to Paul and he was
game. And just like with Neil, Paul’s been a lot of fun to deal with. They’ve
both been incredibly awesome.”

So besides celebrity voices and family-friendly silliness,
what else should “Future-Worm!” (which – FYI – officially debuts on Disney XD
tomorrow, August 1st at 11 a.m. ET / PT) viewers expect? A surprisingly varied
format.

“That’s another aspect of ‘Future-Worm!’ that’s really been
fun. Normal animated TV shows either do a single 22 minute-long episode or two
11 minute-long episodes back-to-back,” Quincy explained. “Well, on this Disney
XD show, we’re actually using 3 different formats: The 3 minute, the 7 minute and
the 11 minute-long episode. Which means that we don’t have to artificially pad
an episode’s story out to fit a particular show length. We can keep them as
short and as funny as we like.”

But you know what Ryan really seemed to like best about
working with Disney Television Animation on “Future-Worm!” ? The fact that –
given that Mickey is such a master when it comes to marketing &
merchandising – there’s a distinct possibility that, at some point in the
not-so-distant future – Disney XD viewers will actually be able to own their
very own “Future-World!” lunch box (time traveling ability not included).

“As much as I love the idea that I’m finally working on a
show that I share with my kids – more importantly, that parents can watch with
their own children – wouldn’t it cool if fans of ‘Future-Worm!’ could own their
very own lunch box? Or – better yet – a Future-Worm plush with the beard, the
visor and those abs?,” Quincy laughed. “That would be so awesome.”

This article was originally published in the Huffington Post on Sunday, July 31, 2016