Seth MacFarlane Is Ditching The Orville To Make A Comic Book Show
Seth MacFarlane is working on adapting The Shrouded College, a popular graphic novel, for television.
Seth MacFarlane is teaming up with NBCUniversal’s Peacock streaming service to adapt the graphic novel series The Shrouded College. Deadline reports that MacFarlane’s Fuzzy Door production company behind the Hulu series The Orville, will also be producing the new series.
The Shrouded College is a series of graphic novels published by Image comics. The first volume Hell to Pay, was just published in November of 2022, and the next volume, The Bloody Dozen, is set to hit comic shops later this year. Seth MacFarlane joins the writers of The Shrouded College, Charles Soule, and Will Sliney as an executive producer on the upcoming Peacock exclusive.
Soule and Sliney are no strangers to the comic world. Soule has several writing credits, including She-Hulk, Darth Vader, and Daredevil. Sliney has drawn everything from Star Wars title Doctor Aphra to Marvel’s X-Men. Seth MacFarlane has always shown a knack for working with great talent, and The Shrouded College duo is no exception.
The Shrouded College will continue Seth MacFarlane’s pivot from straight-up comedy to other genres like sci-fi with The Orville and now horror. The Shrouded College follows several interconnected stories featuring different characters fighting a secret supernatural cold war on the side of the titular institution, which is rapidly deteriorating.
The new series joins the growing list of projects that Seth MacFarlane is currently juggling. The Orville creator has a lot on his plate, including a television adaptation of his hit movie Ted, an animated reboot of the ’70s sitcom Good Times, and a remake of The Naked Gun, just to name a few. That’s in addition to MacFarlane’s regular duties on Family Guy and American Dad.
The new Ted prequel series has already wrapped filming for its first season and is currently in post-production. Seth MacFarlane has gone on record as promising that the series will be just as messed up as the film it’s based on, with swear words galore.
Seth MacFarlane hasn’t announced whether the new series will be animated or live-action. The Sing star also hasn’t indicated whether The Shrouded College will be a raunchy adult affair akin to Ted and Family Guy or if it will be more family-friendly. Given the action-horror tone of the original graphic novel, a more adult adaptation might be the way to go.
The Shrouded College is part of a deal between Seth MacFarlane and NBCUniversal that will see the creator earning a whopping $200 million over five years. The deal came after MacFarlane became publicly disillusioned with his long-time association with 20th Century Fox, at one point saying that he was “embarrassed to work for this company” in regard to Fox.
Hopefully, the new deal will be a better fit for the Cleveland Show creator. There is no planned release date for The Shrouded College, so don’t expect it anytime soon. The series will most likely drop in late 2024 or early 2025 at the latest. In the meantime, there’s enough wild and wacky content coming soon from the twisted mind of Seth MacFarlane to keep fans busy until then.
