Posted in: Paramount+, TV | Tagged: Among Us

Among Us Creator Owen Dennis on Adapting Game to Animated TV Series

Among Us creator Owen Dennis discusses adapting the Intersloth game franchise into a Paramount+ animated horror-comedy series, and more.

Owen Dennis is becoming a force in the animated world since bursting onto the scene, working on the zany Cartoon Network series Regular Show and developing Infinity Train. His latest project taps into the familiar adult animation space with Paramount+'s Among Us, adapted from the Intersloth games franchise of the same name, about a group of eccentric, monochromatic crewmates of a ship transporting junk across the galaxy who must root out an Impostor in their midst before they fall victim to its villainous designs. The series is based on the globally popular multiplayer social deception game of the same name. Dennis spoke to Bleeding Cool about how he drew inspiration from other favorite sci-fi and murder-mystery franchises to develop the animated series, securing creative autonomy from Intersloth, thinking outside the box of animated conventions to make the show work, and casting enough recognizable voices to make the series work.

Among Us: Owen Dennis on Developing an Animated Horror Comedy

BC: What intrigued you about 'Among Us' and bringing that Intersloth franchise to life for TV?

Dennis: If you look at what the game 'Among Us is pulling from the history of sci-fi, video games, movies, and other things-it's also things I typically pull from. It's thinking about and informed by things like 'The Thing' (1982), 'Alien' (1979), 'Star Trek' or things like that. Those are all things that affected me as well, and then, I've also always been into big mysteries and whodunits, like 'Agatha Christie.' I read a lot of 'Agatha Christie' when I was a kid, as a fan of murder mysteries. It was like combining things that I'm into, and then that's the game. When I heard that they were looking to develop a TV show or movie off it, I was like, "Yeah, I'm in. Please let me give it a shot!" They liked my pitch.

Was it a challenge at all to adapt it for TV, or did the content streamline itself?

I would say it was the usual challenges that come with any adaptation, but [Intersloth] were very cool with us doing whatever we wanted to do. They said, "We make games, and you make TV shows, so do the thing that makes you happy," and the people at Innersloth are also artists and people who make things themselves. They fully understand that the best thing you can do for your work is to give it to an artist to go crazy with, so they got it. It was great.

I imagine, as far as conventions go with 'Among Us,' the simplicity of the artwork, but also at the same time, since everyone's in helmets, you might have to think outside the box when it comes to facial expressions. Was there some type of way or unique approach you thought about going through for emoting, or did it become elementary with the animation style?

We had to rely on various animation fundamentals and things like that, because, back to the roots of animation, how storytelling is done in cartoon language, one of the issues you have is that anybody who has ever been taught anything about animation is that everybody goes, "Oh, all the emotions are in the eyes." It's like, "Well, what if your characters don't have eyes? [Laughs] What are you supposed to do?" It was important to me to make sure that we got artists on board who had worked in a lot of different kinds of comedy and art styles, who could show emotions through the characters without…even though it's very difficult. Even though they don't have eyes, mouths, or a face, it's difficult, so you must rely a lot more on body language, color, and the way that characters move. There's a lot of other things you must pick up, more to…elevate different parts since you don't have faces; you must elevate other parts of the acting.

Speaking of which, you got such a wide range of voice acting veterans and talent on board there. Knowing that you faced those animated challenges, was it more leaning on them to execute the characters, casting that wide net to get them on board?

It was pretty cool finding the voice actors, as we knew roughly after we'd written the characters, we knew this person would be good, and that person was good. We worked with some casting directors who had their ideas and stuff. The issue I had is that every project I've worked on up to this point was usually one, two, or three characters that you're dealing with; then you tell a story of two or three characters. This is the first time I've ever done [a project] where I had this ensemble cast from the very beginning, so it was a lot of making sure that whoever we cast could act and have the range to do drama and comedy.

You also get an unusual situation with the show, because we don't have any mouths, right? Which means that sometimes, if you see a shot where there's like eight characters all standing there talking. You must know which one is talking just from their voice alone, because they might not be moving, and there's no mouth, so you can't tell who is talking just by movement. You need another way to make it understandable who's talking, which is a very unusual predicament to be in, so it was a lot of making sure, like, this voice sounds different than this voice sounds different in this place. That was like 11 different people you had to do that for, and making sure that all their voices sounded very distinct from one another is difficult.

Among Us, which features the voices of Dan Stevens, Yvette Nicole Brown, Kimiko Glenn, Liv Hewson, Ashley Johnson, Wayne Knight, Phil LaMarr, Randall Park, Debra Wilson, Elijah Wood, and Patton Oswalt, is available on Paramount+.

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