How The Ted TV Series Will Break New Ground According To Seth MacFarlane

Fans of the raunchy big-screen "Ted" duology are about to be treated to a whole new peek into the life of the sentient teddy bear. Peacock is currently developing a prequel series that will cover Ted's (voiced by Seth MacFarlane) early years. Presumably, this will cover that golden time before he became a workaday bear, back when his existence as a companion of the adolescent John Bennett (Mark Wahlberg in the film series) was a rare and miraculous event to be celebrated and ruminated upon in the press. It will be set in a Boston suburb in the 1990s. Per Collider, the cast will feature Max Burkholder as a teenage John Bennett, Giorgia Whigham as his cousin Blaire, and Scott Grimes as a younger version of John's father, Matty.

Paramount is playing it close to the vest with this series otherwise, and no other cast members have been announced, nor has a release date for the show. There haven't been any other details revealed about the program at all, other than the fact that MacFarlane remains heavily involved with the project. As a matter of fact, he recently teased in an interview that "Ted" will break new barriers for animated programming.

Per an interview with Collider, MacFarlane said that "Ted" will mark the first time a CGI character has ever existed as a frequently-appearing main character on a television program. "Look, it's unprecedented to do a television series where your main character is fully generated CGI. I think for movies, we're so used to it, but you don't think about the fact that this hasn't really been done to this extent for television," he told the website.

MacFarlane's example appears to be fully accurate. While films such as the "Space Jam" series and the 2022 version of "Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers" are well-known for combining live action with animation, there aren't many examples of CGI characters co-existing with live-action characters on a recurring basis. The most memorable recent television examples — including "Family Guy" character Stewie Griffin's appearance on "Bones" (per TV Line) — are all brief cameos. 

MacFarlane also vows that the show will feel like the film it's based upon, yet will also go to new places unexplored by the films. "I think people who've enjoyed the first movie and enjoyed that tone are going to be pretty happy with what we're doing here," he said. Since he previously thought the first film was going to be a total flop, it only goes to show how much faith he's developed in the project.