What rock have I been living under? I never knew that Tom Hanks was making an animated web series set in an anti-dystopian future… but now we have our first look at it and it’s called ‘Electric City’.
The series has been in development for years and is now ready to begin airing over at Yahoo! on July 17th. The voice cast for the series is pretty impressive as well, including Jeanne Tripplehorn (‘Big Love’), Holland Taylor (‘Two and a Half Men’), Ginnifer Goodwin (‘Once Upon a Time’), Jason Antoon (‘No Ordinary Family’), Chris Parnell (‘Suburgatory’), and Paul Scheer (‘Tron Uprising’) among others.
Hanks described ‘Electric City’ as “a very gripping, almost film-noir, very serious look at a future that was not a dysfunctional dystopia, that an awful lot of the future things are.”
The series will be broken down into several short webisodes, which in total will wind up being about 90 minutes long, so it’s basically a full-length movie in small palatable bite-sized chunks.
There’s no word yet on exactly what Hanks and his Playtone production company have in mind but it seems like they’ll be expanding the universe in some ways. Gary Goetzman, a partner of Playtone, in an interview with Entertainment Weekly had this to say:
Every now and then, storytelling and technology unite in a fun and surprising way. Electric City brings viewers into a totally unique world through a truly immersive online experience whether they’re at home on their computers or mobile on their tablets and smartphones.
I’m not sure what that means but it sounds like ‘Electric City’ will be more than just video on our computer screens and devices. I don’t know about you but I’m hoping that Hanks manages to incorporate some AR stuff into the deal. I’m a sucker for that technology.
There’s no embed ready yet but you can check out the first teaser video for ‘Electric City’ on Yahoo! now.
So what do you think? Do you like the sound of ‘Electric City’? Comment below and let us know.
