During a recent chat with masters of the modern action cartoon Man of Action, our wide-ranging conversation covered everything from their favorite toons from childhood, to the wild and continuing success of Ben 10, to current and upcoming projects in their pipeline. We brought you the focus on the new Ben 10 reboot yesterday, which teases the story to come for Ben Tennyson and some surprising twists that are in store for new and old fans alike. Today, we'll take a look at everything else Man of Action has in the works.
Man of Action, comprised of Duncan Rouleau, Joe Kelly and Steven T. Seagle (along with Joe Casey who unfortunately wasn’t available for this interview) are currently focused on the run of Ben 10, but they have a lot of other irons in the fire. Some of those projects are in the familiar field of animated action series, like the upcoming Mega Man show and the debut of Zak Storm. They also supplied us with updates on their feature-length projects, I Kill Giants and Melody. We'll get to all of that below, but first, let's get to know the men behind Man of Action a little bit.
Whenever I get a chance to talk to the creative talent involved in animation, I always like to start out with a question about their favorite childhood cartoons. It should come as no surprise that Man of Action's favorites were, of course, action-focused series:
Steven T. Seagle: I'll always pick Johnny Quest. The original.
Duncan Rouleau: Speed Racer.
Joe Kelly: The Herculoids. I love me some Herculoids. When we work, we're always trying to grab that spirit of the things that we remember fondly but obviously put our modern take on it. What's happening for us now, what do we think that a current audience wants? But our head is always back in that, what was I like when I was eight? What did I like, what did I want to see? How do I do that in a modern context? So, it's easy to get back to those shows once you put it in a kid context.
Duncan Rouleau: I would also say it's not that I ever want to stop seeing stuff like that, it's just as you get older you add more things to the things that you like, that's all. If I could watch a great version of something like Speed Racer right now, I'd be watching it. Just as well as I'd be watching, you know, Dog Day Afternoon, or, you know, whatever's the latest, greatest movie out that isn't necessarily have to be action-based but could be character-based.
The conversation inevitably turned to which cartoons or comics Man of Action would love to see adapted, or even adapt themselves:
Steven T. Seagle: I'll come full circle to say that I am ready willing and able to write the Johnny Quest live action movie as soon as any studio knows I’m alive and wants to.
Joe Kelly: For all this stuff that we do that's, like, super kid-friendly and family friendly, I do tend to like darker materials. The Spectre is a property that I happen to love. And would want to see that done right as a TV show that would actually be really cool as a TV show. I think the world is ready for The Spectre.
Duncan Rouleau: After seeing Legion, I want so badly to do a long form story along those lines. Something that has a very psychedelic in its structure, as well. So the next thing that I would love to do is an adaption of The Prisoner, the 1960s version.
'Generator Rex'
Are there any other properties that you would like to either reboot or pick up where you left off? Maybe something like Generator Rex or something that fans haven't seen before?
Joe Kelly: We would love to go back to Rex, I mean Rex is very close to our hearts collectively. We thought the show was really, really cool and we liked it. It was a little bit more mature in tone. So Rex would be something we'd be more than happy to explore again.
And then we're always working on stuff. We always have a ton of stuff going. So there are things that are coming down the pike that you'll hear about very soon and then there there's stuff that'll be poppin' a couple years from now. But yeah we are always cooking up new stuff.
Steven T. Seagle: Right, it's been announced that Mega Man is coming to Cartoon Network so if you want to say that, you can say that.
Duncan Rouleau: Yes, okay there we go. No more dancing around there, we're working on Mega Man.
Steven T. Seagle: And I just wanted to add on the Generator Rex one, that the nice thing about being back to Cartoon Network is that we have our director from Generator Rex is our director on Ben 10 and that's John Fang. He's also a producer alongside with us. So we get the pleasure of working with old people but we would love to revisit some of the old characters that we know and love dearly, especially Rex, that would be fun.
'Zak Storm'
A point of clarification, are you guys involved with season four of Avengers Assemble at all? Are you still writing, producer status on that?
Steven T. Seagle: No, we did the first two seasons of Ultimate Spider-Man and Avengers Assemble and then that was when the Ben 10 reboot was coming up. So we had to withdraw and put all of our separate energy to making sure we got the redo right.
Speaking of other series that have been announced, you guys can talk a little bit. I know Big Hero 6 is coming to Disney XD. Is that still on track to premiere this fall?
Steven T. Seagle: It is still on track to premiere this fall. We are not on that show, we're just down the street. But our good friend Nick is the director on that show and it's looking great, it's gonna be lots of fun. It will pick up from where the movie left off and it's a bold decision to do a series instead of a sequel.
Another one you may not be able to talk a lot about but maybe give kind of a teaser, if you can, Zak Storm?
Duncean Rouleau: Yeah, it's been announced in animation magazines, correct. We're working with Zag Animation, the creators of Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir. And SAMG which is a Korean animation studio which is so fantastic. We've been working with them for a long time on Zak Storm. But we now have 29 episodes all ready to go.
I don't know if we can announce where, so we can't do that. The basic idea is it's a kid who is trapped in the Bermuda Triangle where the Bermuda Triangle is the junk drawer of the universe. Everything that gets caught in there stays in there. So it is Vikings, the Romans, any disappearing World War II ships, you name it. It's all in there. And Zak has the only thing that can get you out of it. So he forms a little crew of some aliens and Atlanteans and some pirates and they go off on crazy adventures to get themselves out of the Bermuda Triangle. But it's a comedy/action show which is CG and it’s fantastic.
Steven T. Seagle: A little fun fact is that the day that we pitched Ben 10 we also pitched Generator Rex and we pitched Zak Storm. Now they'll all be [in existence.]
'I Kill Giants' and 'Melody'
What's the status of I Kill Giants?
Joe Kelly: I Kill Giants we wrapped shooting in the fall, actually we just saw the most recent edit at really, really fantastic. It's adapted from a graphic novel hat I wrote and J. M. Ken Niimura drew. It's beautiful. Anders Walters did the ... Director, he won an Academy Award for best short film a couple years back and he's just been bleeding for this movie. And it's coming out great. I really, really super satisfied. It's the opposite of many comic book adaptions, stories you hear in terms of like creators being angry and being disregarded and stuff ...
Everybody who has touched this project, like, I've met personally, they've been very deferential. I wrote the screenplay they knew from the beginning. I'm stubborn and I'm not going anywhere, this is my baby. It's been great, it's been a fantastic experience. I can't wait for people to see it hopefully we'll start the festival thing happening later in the fall, that is the goal.
So that'll be kind of the first rollout for everything. It's got a seller cast here. Zoe Saldana, who just starred in a little movie this weekend ...
Joe Kelly: Yup, all these art movies she does. Zoe's amazing and she was a big champion to help get the film made, having her attached was very important. And Madison Wolfe plays Barbara and she's just a fierce fierce actress, really, she's gonna be amazing, I think. Sydney Wade played Sophia. It was just ... Imogen Poots played Karen, it was just such solid, solid actresses, it's a really great cast.
I also saw that you guys had writing credits on a movie called Melody? Is that still in progress? Is that anything you can talk about?
Steven T. Seagle: Melody is another Zag production and it is definitely happening, and we had our moment in the sun [with it], but it’s gone to other writers as movies sometimes do. But it's through Zag. We know what's going on with it, we can't really tell you about it, but it's going to be fun.
Duncean Rouleau: We also helped with an adaptation of a very famous app called Fruit Ninja, we helped turned it into an online show. And it's really a lot of fun, you should check it out if you get a chance. It turned out really well.
You can check out my review of that series, Fruit Ninja: Frenzy Force, right here!
