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Matt Groening is making an animated medieval adult fantasy with Netflix

Matt Groening is making an animated medieval adult fantasy with Netflix

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The creator of The Simpsons and Futurama is aiming for a 2018 release

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Comic-Con International 2017 - 'The Simpsons' Panel
Photo by Mike Coppola/Getty Images

Netflix announced today that Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons and Futurama, will be developing a medieval animated adult fantasy called Disenchantment. It’s scheduled to begin streaming on Netflix in 2018.

The series’s protagonist is a young, “hard-drinking” princess named Bean (Broad City’s Abbi Jacobson), and her two male companions are a “feisty elf” named Elfo (Nat Faxon) and a demon named Luci (Eric Andre). While both The Simpsons and Futurama have dynamic, fleshed-out female characters, this is Groening’s first series with a clear female lead.

Rough Draft Studios, the studio that does the art for Futurama, will animate Disenchantment. From the few details Netflix is offering, it’s easy to imagine a sort of epic-fantasy version of Futurama, with the same acerbic, absurdist humor as Groening’s other shows. In the US, Netflix doesn’t have a series that fits this exact bill, though Archer may come closest. (Netflix also carries Futurama, so Disenchantment should fit in.)

"The series will bear [Groening’s] trademark animation style and biting wit, and we think it's a perfect fit for our many Netflix animation fans," says Cindy Holland, Netflix’s vice president of original content.

From the premise, this series sounds a lot like a myriad of other failed adult animated medieval cartoons like Korgoth of Barbaria or Son of Zorn. But both of Groening’s other major shows have been well-received, long-running successes, so it’s hard to see this one not attracting an audience as well.

“Ultimately," Groening says in the press release, "Disenchantment will be about life and death, love and sex, and how to keep laughing in a world full of suffering and idiots, despite what the elders and wizards and other jerks tell you."

Disenchantment is planned for a 10-episode initial season.