Joel Kuwahara, who co-founded Bob's Burgers studio Bento Box and left a year ago, has released a one-minute teaser pilot for The Salty Tales of Tony & Keith with showrunner Mark Evestaff, through his new company FutureCel and Evestaff's Toronto-based Curbside Entertainment.
The adult comedy comes from comedians Seán Cullen and Chris Locke, who recorded themselves improvising as two unflappable men in absurd situations during the pandemic. Kuwahara, who found the project through a LinkedIn message from Evestaff, says they kept every line of that dialogue and set out to make the characters move.
Nura Studios director Elvis Deane animated it with the company's Nura Showcraft platform, working from hand-drawn designs, layouts, storyboards and the original voice tracks. The team says this cut costs by nearly half and turned week-long revisions into minutes.
The producers insist the creative core stays human; Kuwahara calls generative AI a big unlock for independents. The teaser comes with an interview on the process, and the series is in development while they shop the pilot.
Sources · 1