After several successful years starring in the sketch comedy series Key and Peele, Jordan Peele shocked us all by delving into the horror genre with the smash hit Get Out. One Oscar win later, the auteur is creating all sorts of exciting new content with his company Monkeypaw productions, which includes the highly anticipated Get Out follow-up Us, a reboot of The Twilight Zone hosted by Peele, BlacKkKlansman, and many more.
His latest project re-teams him with fellow Key and Peele writer Charlie Sanders. Weird City is a comedy sci-fi anthology series on Youtube Originals, which follows the citizens of Weird, who live in two communities divided by The Line. Above the line are the wealthy Haves, and below the line are the scrappy Have-Nots. The six half-hour episode series features a tremendous cast, including Rosario Dawson, Michael Cera, Steven Yeun, Laverne Cox, Gillian Jacobs, Mark Hamill, Awkwafina, and many more. All stories in the anthology series are connected by the mysterious mad scientist Dr. Negari (LeVar Burton). Think Black Mirror but a lot less depressing.
We got to take a look at the first episode, which follows Dylan O’Brien (Teen Wolf) as he joins a singles soul mate matching service called “The One That’s the One.” He finds himself flummoxed when his one true match is revealed to be the curmudgeonly Ed O’Neill (Modern Family). The two men immediately reject the pairing, but soon discover that they have more in common than they realize.
The series delights in taking classic sci-fi tropes and future technology and finding the humor in them. We sat down with co-creator and writer Charlie Sanders to find out more. The idea for the series came up back when Sanders and Peele were working on Key and Peele together. Sanders said, “Me and Jordan came up with it in 2011 during season one [of Key and Peele] which I was a writer on for all five seasons., and I would write weird sci-fi sketches that Jordan really got a kick out of, and we just started talking all the way back then, if Key and Peele blew up, someday we’d try and expand those ideas into their own show.”
For the duo, crossing over from comedy to sci-fi wasn’t as difficult as it may seem. Sanders said, “I’ve been a sci-fi nerd my whole life, I hadn’t written that much sci-fi besides sketches on Key and Peele, but I jumped right into it.” Sanders also cites Planet of the Apes as one of his favorite sci-fi influences. “I like dystopian futures, but I wanted to put my own optimistic, comedic spin on it.”
Weird City premieres February 13th on Youtube Premium.
(image: screencap)
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