The Croods was a surprising success story for DreamWorks Animation, spawning a franchise that’s made over $1 billion in box office, merchandising, and home video sales. The 2013 film made nearly $600 million alone, and even though its sequel, The Croods: A New Age was released seven years after the original and with half the budget (and at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic), it dominated the box office for weeks.
A year after the release of that sequel (and the years of a Netflix prequel, Dawn of the Croods), DreamWorks began a fun continuation of the franchise with The Croods: Family Tree, a series that hearkens back to the family sitcoms of the ’90s while maintaining the unique and vibrant visuals of the films. The second season will be released on April 5 through Hulu and Peacock, and showrunners (and executive producers) Mark Banker and Todd Grimes couldn’t be more excited.
On Growing the Branches of The Croods: Family Tree
“I always liked The Croods franchise,” Grimes says, “I can relate so much to their relationships because I have three kids myself, so when we saw the movie, I thought, ‘Yeah, this is sort of like my family if we were eight people.’ I felt like it got even more fun with the dynamic of introducing the new family the Bettermans in the second film.” The Betterman family introduces a fun new element into the mix that both creators knew they could mine a lot of comedy out of, while also “getting the opportunity to explore more of those interpersonal relationships of these unique people,” as Grimes says.
“We got a chance to see the second movie as a work in progress when we came onto the show,” Banker says, and agrees that “the introduction of the Bettermans creates a really fun dynamic of a primal family versus a sophisticated family. So the classic Odd Couple setup gives us a lot of stuff to play with.” This family (and especially their inventor patriarch, Phil Betterman) open up a slew of new elements which expand the world of The Croods, from more complicated character development to different technologies the ‘caveman’ family can interact with.
It’s something that really only animation can accomplish, something Banker and Grimes are well aware of and proficient in, having worked together on The Epic Tales of Captain Underpants. Both are frequent producers on animated projects, with Banker doing a lot of writing and Grimes doing a lot of directing.
Banker and Grimes on Animation
“Animation in particular for me was something I kind of always wanted to get into since I was young, because I always loved cartoons and stuff, even when I got sort of ‘too old’ to watch cartoons,” Grimes says. He also loves comedy, perhaps the closest bedfellow of animation, so he is “geared more toward animation that had a comedic tone to it. All the shows that we produce at DreamWorks were perfect for what I wanted to do.”
“When I was growing up, I lived for Saturday morning,” Banker reminisces. “I loved Saturday morning cartoons, and I would watch them from 6 am when the Ag Report started, so I get a running start at them, straight through to noon when my all-time favorite, Thundarr the Barbarian, came on. It’s a real dream come true to be able to sort of grow up and work in something that you love.” From Space Ghost Coast to Coast and Adventure Time through to The Croods: Family Tree, Banker has been writing and producing great animation for a while.
“One of the things I love with animation,” Banker says, “is that the limits to what you can do is really just your imagination. With live-action, you have to build sets or go on location, but with animation, it’s basically what you come up with, right? You can do almost anything if you’re willing to go there, which is a lot of fun.” Animation may be the only real way to capture The Croods, which is mostly limited to the technology and actuality of the prehistoric situation. Banker and Grimes try to deal with these limitations in the most creative ways possible.
“We do a lot of what you call cheating,” Grimes jokes, referencing the fact that family-friendly animation isn’t meticulous about historical accuracy. Regardless, The Croods: Family Tree does make an effort to actually engage with its historically specific and technologically limited world in comical ways. “We do have a lot of occasional conversations,” Grimes says, “there are certain rules to the world of The Croods in the cave people era, if you will, but we have a lot of fun coming up with creative ways to work around stuff.” The first episode of the second season features a clever device that uses mirrors to create a kind of prehistoric TV. Banker says:
It’s the best part of being an inventor because we get to come up with the idea and then make them reality without actually dealing with the truth, which is the best of all worlds. We do a lot of it with like rock and stick technology. We cheat a bit, but the joke on the show is that we are making the most realistic caveman show ever made. We try to keep it as grounded in reality as we can, but we’re also lucky that we have a couple of inventors on the show, which makes it easier, so that gives us the ability to come up with things that make the world a little bigger and more technologically advanced. I also love technology. So I love the challenge of like, “how do we make television a reality before television was invented?”
“Being able to make these primitive contraptions is very much an allegory for modern-day devices,” Grimes continues. Coming up with new technologies is only part of the way The Croods: Family Tree develops throughout season two. The most interesting and enjoyable aspect of continuing the show for Grimes and Banker is the opportunity to explore and elaborate some interesting relationships and psychologies of their characters; The Croods is, after all, essentially about family and the idea that sticking and working together has helped humanity evolve.
The Croods as a Family Sitcom
“After the first six episodes where we had established our world and some dynamics of the show, this season we got to take another step forward and dig a little deeper into some relationships,” Banker says, describing the delightful second season. “We dive into the relationship between Brenda and her daughter […] we have an episode that sort of digs a little deeper into conflict that has been brewing for years, and also the emotional connection between them.” They’re both excited about an episode called Daddy Daughter Day, in which Grug goes on his annual trip with Eep but brings Sandy along for the first time, “which changes the dynamic and also leads to emotional moments about this father’s relationship with his daughters,” Banker explains.
As it’s title aptly implies, much of The Croods: Family Tree is about familial relationships and the drama and comedy which occurs when a group of very different people are often stuck together under the same roof. The show is part of a lineage of family sitcoms, and proudly wears its influences on its sleeve, as Grimes and Banker both love the genre. “We do love sitcoms,” Grimes says, “and we’ve been able to sort of create a show in that same vein, even though it’s animation. We get to have a lot of fun doing like dialogue, humor and situational comedy, which is very true to family shows.” Banker continues:
I grew up on sitcoms. I love them, I’ve seen every episode of Three’s Company at least 10 times. So it was a thrill to work in that area. I have two young kids. And it’s always a challenge to find a show that you can watch as a group […] I think that’s always our goal of this show, is to create family viewing experience where there’s something for everybody. And I think we’ve done that, also nodding to sitcoms we grew up with and how they’ve evolved and become more sophisticated. In this show, we’re taking what is a pretty classic sitcom setup, and the challenge for us is finding new ways to make that fresh for a new audience, and hopefully we’ve done it.
With the massive success of the franchise over the past decade, and the anticipation over their show’s second season, it’s safe to say they have. The Croods: Family Tree premiers April 5, 2022, on Hulu and Peacock.
Read Next
About The Author
.jpg?fit=crop&w=100&h=100)
Stay connected with us on social media platform for instant update click here to join our Twitter, & Facebook
We are now on Telegram. Click here to join our channel (@TechiUpdate) and stay updated with the latest Technology headlines.
For all the latest Education News Click Here
