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Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake showrunner Adam Muto described putting together the popular animated show in a new interview. And there's a lot that goes into it.
Recently, he talked with Deadline about slicing it all together—from ideas to how it's aired. He also described the process of creating fresh and new ideas. This is all being discussed as Season 2 is on the way after being renewed after its initial 10-episode run.
Adam Muto discusses Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake
Regarding creating the animated hit, Muto said, “It was a pretty long process because it stretches back to the ending of the original series, where we had options to either do a volume of episodes, that turned into the Distant Lands specials, or a limited series.”
He added, “Fionna and Cake was always on that list because we hadn't explored a ton about those characters and they were also recognizable on their own. It basically started with asking, ‘What haven't we done on the original series that we would only really be able to do with a different set of characters?' Eventually, it just felt like that was the best fit for Fionna and Cake instead of just trying to do a straight reboot of the original series or just remaking stories that we had done with Finn and Jake. What stories did they lend themselves to uniquely?”
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The decision regarding making it a series instead of a special was pretty clear.
“Honestly, it felt easier to think of Fionna and Cake as a series because the specials were cool, but it felt like starting over every time,” the showrunner continued. “Those all potentially could have been miniserieses, and you have to do the front-end work to treat it like that, but they were only 44 minutes each, and even that was a different format than the 11 minutes we had been doing. So, going back to a series, even if it's 22-minute episodes, was a bit easier than approaching it as these long forms.”
Also, in the interview, when addressing challenges, he said, “Creatively, it's kind of the same problem we've always had, which is how do you make new stuff without feeling like you're repeating yourself, especially on a long-running series. It helped to pivot to characters that are popular, but definitely secondary to Finn and Jake's story. So, kind of balancing what is interesting now to us, and what can we call back to without feeling like it's pandering and how would this play to somebody who hasn't seen the original series and might not have any of that grounding? Would it make any sense?”
Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake is a spin-off from the original 2010 animated series that followed Finn and Jake, a dog, on various adventures. The new Fionna and Cake is about Fionna Campbell (Madeleine Martin) and her cat, Cake (Roz Ryan). They live in an alternate reality, and Fionna is stuck in dead-end jobs, all while she dreams of magical lands. She and Cake are put into a multiverse adventure when Simon Petrikov (Tom Kenny), formerly known as the Ice King, accidentally gets them to Ooo by summoning them.
Watch Season One of Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake, which is now streaming on Max.
