Scavengers Reign’s Writers on Creating a Beautifully Hostile Sci-Fi Show
By Justin Carter
In 2016, Adult Swim aired Scavengers, an eight-minute animated short about a pair of human survivors on a hostile alien world. It wasn’t long before co-directors Joseph Bennett and Charles Huettner and production company Green Street were given the green light to make the short into its own full-fledged show, Scavengers Reign, which will soon air on Max and Adult Swim.
Like the original short, Scavengers Reign follows a handful of survivors of a downed interstellar freighter ship looking for a way off the alien planet they crashed on (or at least a way to stay alive). Even though it’s technically a Max original, it’ll feel right at home to those who watch it on Adult Swim: it’s appealingly gross in a way that defines some of the more out-there shows on the late night Cartoon Network block, and sports a simplistic art style that gets more detailed during key moments. Both elements are present in the original Scavengers short, where you can see the bones of what’ll eventually inform the 12-episode show. But even without the context of its source material, Scavengers Reign is an impressive show in its own right, with great visuals, an incredibly creepy alien vibe, and great atmosphere. It all comes together to provide what’s easily one of the best animated series from Max and one of 2023’s strongest animated outings.
Ahead of its premiere next week, io9 spoke with Bennett and writer (and Green Street co-founder) Sean Buckelew about how the show grew out from that initial short and what went into creating the alien fauna that help (and harm) the human cast, as well as building an alien world that’s as beautiful as it is gross.
Justin Carter, io9: What were some of the lessons you learned in creating the show with the short film as a jumping off point? How much did the reality of making the show change from your original expectations?
Joseph Bennett, co-creator: For starters, the original Scavengers short has no dialogue. There was a second where I thought it would be similarly sustainable for the series, but then I realized quickly it wouldn’t work. It’s hard to create a visual narrative for 22 minutes that can hold people’s patience, and I think even with that short, we were testing it. Having actual dialogue allowed for more story arcs and threads that we wanted to bring forward.
Sean Buckelew, writer: From the perspective of when we first started writing the show, I felt like the short showed us what could work and be compelling on a visual level. I think if you didn’t have that, and were going to write scripts, we wouldn’t have had that confidence. When we were writing, we had these big visual set pieces that we put in with more assurance that it’d work in execution. The short’s visual language inspired how we can approach writing and the kind of set pieces we could have.
