The Fox network is launching a new late night animated comedy block called Animation Domination High Def (or ADHD) on Saturdays this summer, and Nick Weidenfeld, the former head of Adult Swim who’s spearheading ADHD, took to Reddit today to answer questions about the late night block.
Fox announced earlier this year that ADHD will be a 90-minute block of new and pre-existing shows airing Saturday nights from 11pm to 12:30am, beginning July 27th. The first three shows will be Axe Cop, Dino Stamtopoulos’s High School USA!, and an untitled series from the Lucas Brothers. Weidenfeld revealed today that he has “a long term commitment” from the network, meaning that the network won’t just pull the plug on this experiment if it doesn’t work right out of the gate like Fox does with everything else. Weidenfeld explained, “We often talk about how The Simpsons was allowed to grow from the Tracey Ullman shorts into a real series, and that’s the idea with the shows on ADHD (and the block as whole). So if you like the shit we’re making, it will be around for a while. And if you don’t, I’m sorry, because we’re gonna be around for a while.”
Nick Weidenfeld also revealed that ADHD will have the option to air content that would receive a TV-MA (mature) rating. He wrote, “If we need to, we can explore stuff I couldn’t in the past. But that doesn’t mean Standards is psyched with everything we make. They weren’t thrilled about seeing SpiderMan’s cock or all the blood in My Little Cowboys. But honestly we haven’t had anything straight-up killed yet.” Weidenfeld also mentioned that Community creator Dan Harmon did the voice of “a very disgruntled audience member in Axe Cop’s magic act,” which is reason enough to be excited about all of this.
