EXCLUSIVE: Anyone feeling ‘sus’ about the upcoming Among Us series adaptation can rest assured the show will feature all of the game’s fun and gore.
That’s according to Owen Dennis, who is creating and exec producing the popular mobile game’s transfer to TV screens. He lifted the lid on the project in an interview ahead of his session at Italy’s MIA Market today. Deadline is moderating the talk, which takes place at the Cinema Barberini in Rome.
Per the logline, the series is based on the game’s premise: “Members of your crew have been replaced by an alien shapeshifter intent on causing confusion, sabotaging the ship, and killing everyone. Root out the ‘Impostor’ or fall victim to its murderous designs.”
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A splashy cast includes Dan Stevens (Downton Abbey), Liv Hewson (Yellowjackets), Kimiko Glenn (Orange Is The New Black), Randall Park, Ashley Johnson, Yvette Nicole Brown and Elijah Wood. CBS Studios‘ animation arm Eye Animation Productions is currently developing the project in partnership with Innersloth, the independent studio behind the game, alongside Dennis, whose known for the likes of Infinity Train and his work on Regular Show.
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“The game can be a little unsettling,” says Dennis. “You’re walking around what is mostly an empty spaceship with the knowledge that at least one person on the crew is an alien and wants to kill you. It’s creepy in the best way. At the same time, it’s funny and tongue-in-cheek, clearly echoing Alien, Star Trek, and The Thing. Balancing that sort of humor with drama is something I love to do and is in a lot of my previous work like Infinity Train and Regular Show.”
The Among Us gaming property launched in 2018 and reached its peak of popularity in 2021 during the Covid-19 pandemic, though this number has dipped in recent times. It has amassed more than 500 million monthly active users in total, with more than 4 billion views on YouTube and more than 1.22 billion viewing sessions on Twitch in Q4 of 2020 alone.
Estimates put Among Us revenues in the hundreds of millions of dollars and its well-known fans include Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who live-streamed a game on Twitch in 2020 and attracted 440,000 viewers in real time and more than 5 million cumulatively.
Here’s a Q&A with creator, showrunner and executive producer Dennis.
DEADLINE: Hi Owen. The game is a mix of humor and, for want of a better word, murder. How did you recreate the tone for a television audience?
The game can be a little unsettling. You’re walking around what is mostly an empty spaceship with the knowledge that at least one person on the crew is an alien and wants to kill you. It’s creepy in the best way. At the same time, it’s funny and tongue-in-cheek, clearly echoing Alien, Star Trek, and The Thing. Balancing that sort of humor with drama is something I love to do and is in a lot of my previous work like Infinity Train and Regular Show. Bring people in with some jokes then scare them.
It is unusual to create something this ambitious and with so much high-profile talent without a network or streamer attached. As a creative what does that tell you about what CBS Studios/Paramount feel about the project?
It exudes confidence in our show. I believe this could be a new way of making television: Don’t ask for permission, just do the thing that you believe will work! Making it this way is based on artistic belief in the project, trust in the creatives, and confidence that if you like it, then someone else will too. CBS Studios and Innersloth have been great partners in making sure we could create such a fantastic show and letting us do it on our own terms!
The game is popular with children and adults but involves violence that wouldn’t be acceptable in a kids TV show. Can we assume Among Us will be targeted at adults? What else can you say about the target audience?
The target market is anyone who has played the game and anyone who is interested. The fact is, if your kid was playing this game when they were five, then they’ll love this show. I find it hard to believe there isn’t an extremely wide audience for this game when only a couple years ago it was on one out of every 13 phones on the planet. Think about that. One out of every 13 phones on the entire planet. 500 million monthly active users? 4 billion views on Youtube? When the trailer dropped a couple months ago it got 8 million views in the first couple days. I’ve seen these characters graffitied on playgrounds. I’ve seen people post a picture of a trash can and say “Look, it’s Among Us.” With this much widespread appeal, the question is more who isn’t in the target audience of this show?
Artistically, what drew you to this project?
There’s this rule in animation that all expression comes from the eyes. That’s why eyes are often so large relative to people’s heads in animation. Well, what if you have a whole show featuring characters that have no eyes? Not only that, but no mouths? No faces at all? How do you show the whole range of human emotions from happiness, to guilt, to fear, to love, etc on characters that have no face? Well, I thought that sounded like a fun challenge and I think we pulled it off.
How well did you know the game before you began working on this?
Alright, time to admit it, I’m not really good at playing this game, haha! The game involves deceiving other players and I’ve never been a good liar. Even when I’m telling the truth in a situation like this, I feel like I’m lying and it trips me up. It makes me too paranoid! So I end up getting caught up in whatever the group is trying to do. An unfortunate thing I learned about myself is that if it was the 1600’s, I basically would 100% be on the wrong side of history in a witch trial. However, that feeling of paranoia, of fear, of trying to do the right thing in a scary situation? Those are the core aspects I took away from playing this game. Mix that together with a big dollop of humor, and that’s the tone I wanted to make sure we injected into the show.
Who had the initial idea for the adaptation?
Innersloth reached out to me after seeing my previous show Infinity Train. We hit it off and I pitched them the idea of how we could make a show, even one that could go for multiple seasons, based on the game.
What was your initial plan when you began to adapt the IP?
We had a lot of freedom to develop these characters and figure out who we wanted in the show – their roles and their dynamics with each other – and we built the show out from there. It’s a very character-based show. We wanted this to feel like a bunch of people you already know and care about, so whenever someone dies (and there will be a lot of deaths) you feel bad about it even though you just met them. So that was the plan: whatever we do, if a character dies, we have to make sure the audience cares about it.
What stage is the project at now?
All finished and wrapped in a bow. Actually, I’ve heard that if you put this show on your platform, that makes you super cool and sexy and the life of the party and everyone will like you and, subsequently, the cleaning of your fridge you’ve been putting off for three months will actually already be done.