Monsters, Inc. Disney+ Series Scores Film's Original Voice Actors
The original stars of Monsters, Inc. are getting back to work — and we mean that quite literally.
Walt Disney Television Animation announced Tuesday that the forthcoming animated Monsters, Inc. spin-off series headed to Disney+ is officially in the works. Entitled Monsters at Work, the series has tapped original Monsters, Inc. voice actors John Goodman, Billy Crystal, John Ratzenberger, Jennifer Tilly, and Bob Peterson to reprise their roles.
Details about the project and the casting news comes to us courtesy of The Hollywood Reporter.
Fans of the OG Monsters, Inc. film, which debuted in 2001, will remember Goodman as the voice of the fuzzy blue-green ogre James P. "Sulley" Sullivan and Crystal as Michael "Mike" Wazowski, the one-eyed monster who can never get himself into photos. Longtime Disney-Pixar voice actor Ratzenberg lent his pipes to Yeti (a.k.a. The Abominable Snowman), Tilly voiced Mike's snake-haired girlfriend Celia Mae, and Peterson provided the unforgettably raspy voice of Roz, the slug-like Scare Floor F administrator who turned out to be an undercover agent for the Child Detection Agency.
Scheduled to debut on the streaming platform in 2020, Monsters at Work will also feature a bunch of franchise newbies: Superstore actor Ben Feldman, Star Wars: The Last Jedi actress Kelly Marie Tran, Barry's Henry Winkler, Coco voice actress Alanna Ubach, Archer star Aisha Tyler, Star Wars Resistance voice actor Stephen Stanton, and Raising Hope's Lucas Neff.
The series begins six months after the end of Monsters, Inc., and sees the monsters harvesting laughter from children rather than their screams to power Monstropolis. Feldman's character Tylor Tuksmon is the main protagonist of Monsters at Work. He's described as "eager and talented mechanic on the Monsters, Inc. Facilities Team who dreams of working on the Laugh Floor alongside Mike and Sulley." Other characters include Millie Tuskmon (Tyler), Tylor's mom; Val Little (Tran), Tylor's best pal and number-one confidante; Fritz (Winkler), the "scatterbrained" head honcho of the Monsters, Inc. Facilities Tam; Cutter (Ubach), an "officious rule follower"; Smitty and Needleman (both voiced by Stanton), the incompetent custodians; and Duncan (Neff), the "opportunistic plumber."
Monsters at Work is just one of the big projects Disney is developing for exclusive release on Disney+, the company's direct-to-consumer streaming service that's anticipated to launch later this year. The House of Mouse also has under way the live-action Star Wars series The Mandalorian, a Rogue One: A Star Wars Story prequel series led by Diego Luna as Cassian Andor, a revival of Star Wars: The Clone Wars (which will air its seventh season on Disney+), a 10-episode documentary-style show called High School Musical: The Musical, a live-action series titled Diary of a Female President, and a series adaptation of High Fidelity. Oh yeah, and there are the superhero series Disney has planned, too – one for Loki, one for Vision and Scarlet Witch, and one for Falcon and Winter Soldier. Various original films will hit Disney+ as well, including a remake of Lady & the Tramp, the Anna Kendrick-led Christmas movie Noelle, and the feature film adaptation of Jerry Spinelli's novel Stargirl.
Disney is scheduled to make formal announcements about Disney+ and the rest of the original content that will launch on it during an investors presentation on Thursday, April 11. It's assumed that the company may also reveal more details about Monsters at Work, such as an exact premiere date for the series as well as how long its first season will run for.