Genndy Tartakovsky Shares News of a Primal Sequel and How Unicorn Survived the WB-Discovery Purge
Photo Courtesy of Warner Bros. Discovery
For those who make animation projects, be it in film or television, they live an odd creative existence. Creators and animators toil on projects, isolated from the outside world, for years before they can even share that the thing has been greenlit into existence. On average, two to five years later, they can finally share their finished passion projects with the world. But by then, those same animators are often already existing in the future, deep into the work of continuing the next phase of that story (especially if it’s a TV series), or just onto something new.
Animator/director/artist Genndy Tartakovsky has been living that creation cycle since he started his professional career at Hanna-Barbera as an Art Director on 2 Stupid Dogs. He’s since created five of his own original animation series for Cartoon Network, created and directed three of the Hotel Transylvania films, and even dipped into live action to storyboard sequences for Iron Man and to create the opening sequence of Priest. In 2023, Tartakovsky is juggling multiple projects including directing the upcoming 2024 New Line R-rated animated feature Fixed, finishing post on the first season of his upcoming Adult Swim series Unicorn: Warrior Eternal, and developing the sequel to his recently completed, Emmy-winning Adult Swim series Primal.
As always, he continues to be a man with his nose tilted down towards the digital tablet or at various computer screens as his various projects continue to hover in the past, present, and the future. With Primal Season 2 arriving on Blu-ray this week and Unicorn premiering May 4, Paste Magazine got Tartakovsky to take a Zoom break with us to reflect on what he accomplished with Primal, his experience inside the scary reorganization within Warner Bros., and how Unicorn, his 15-year passion project, just made it out alive.
Note: This interview was lightly edited for length and clarity.
Paste Magazine: Primal ended last September to great acclaim, and now it’s coming out on physical media for more people to discover it. You storyboarded most of that series yourself with a small crew, which means you were subsumed into the work of actively making it for years. Now that you have some real distance from it, were you able to accomplish what you hoped with the two seasons?
Genndy Tartakovsky: I definitely follow this rule where I never leave any room for regrets. I work on something 110%, and if it doesn’t turn out right, I can never look back and go, “Oh, I wish I could have done this a little longer.” It would be impossible. There’s literally no time. The first season was great. I was really proud of it. The second season, we were changing the storytelling a little and expanding the world. I was very happy with it. If you compare the two seasons, I think the smaller stories, maybe, I like more? I’m not sure. But, I think it’s everything that we wanted to do. I finished it the way I wanted to finish it. Looking back, it’s a huge undertaking. But I love it. If I was watching TV, that’s the kind of show I would want to watch.
Paste: The finale episode,”Echoes of Eternity,” introduced a time jump and the daughter of Spear and Mira, which felt like a potential sequel series in the making. Did you immediately pin ideas for where to go with that, or have you needed a rest from the world, creatively?
Tartakovsky: The reaction to that was really great. But I’ll tell you the truth, I never intended to continue with his daughter’s stories. But now, I have an idea that I want to do. We’re in a holding pattern right now because, with the studio, the dust hasn’t settled. We’re waiting. But we have a schedule. And we’ve already written an overview of the 10 episodes that we would be doing.
I am beyond excited about what it’s going to be. I think people who like Primal will love it. It’s new and different, but the same in a way. I’m ready to go, creatively. Once I stop storyboarding, everything gets easier because the storyboarding is the most time consuming. And so now, I’m already itching to start. But we’re waiting to make sure we can do it.
Paste: Primal certainly became your proof of concept that visual driven, dialogue minimal animation can attract an audience.