'Golden Girls 3033': 'BoJack' Director's Animated Pilot Sends 'The Golden Girls' to the Future - Exclusive

For years, Mike Hollingsworth has found creative ways to inject jokes into animated comedies. Working as a supervising director on “BoJack Horseman,” as well as “Tuca & Bertie,” “Inside Job,” and more, Hollingsworth fills frame after frame with visual humor — cutaway punchlines and backwards puns — plan, silent reminders and jokes written on T-shirts, chyrons and more.

Now he's applying his impressive skills to a chilling live-TV classic: "The Golden Girls." In "Golden Girls 3033," a pilot designed to secure a series order, Hollingsworth reimagines Susan Harris' beloved sitcom with animation, using the original scripts and audio as a starting point before creating new episodes for a story unfolding over more than 1,000 years. in the future. Blanche (Rue McClanahan), Dorothy (Bea Arthur), Rose (Betty White) and Sophia (Estelle Getty) still share a house in Miami - but it's the year 3033, they've discovered the Fountain of Youth, and now Sophia is wandering around the imposing body of a giant yellow robot, among other colorful changes.

IndieWire sat down with Hollingsworth to get the first details on 'Golden Girls 3033,' but before you read it all, watch the initial episode below.

After growing up watching “The Golden Girls,” the idea for a new series came to Hollingsworth almost by accident, while working on “BoJack Horseman” and presenting other shows on various networks. Most of these ideas were based on "doing what other people wanted", and he quickly shifted gears.

"Out of frustration, I started coming up with the craziest ideas, like the most ridiculous concepts," Hollingsworth said. "I was just riffing in the directors room at 'BoJack,' like 'Well, sure, I'm also working on a show - it's 'The Golden Girls,' [but] they find the fountain of youth, and now , they're in the future." That made all the directors laugh, so I'll come back to that in a conversational way."

"Then I realized I was having so much more fun talking about this ridiculous [show] and ideas for it - like Dorothy's ex-husband Stan is an alien squid - than I was. trying to present what they were asking."

When the pandemic hit, Hollingsworth decided to make the pilot himself. The five-minute episode offers a clear taste of what's to come, though future episodes would ideally be half-hour entries, crafted by a full team of professional writers and animators. Hollingsworth also acknowledges the sitcom's importance to the gay community. Her brother Bryan worked on character design for the pilot, and Hollingsworth hopes to put more LGBTQ voices "in the driver's seat" if "Golden Girls 3033" makes it to series.

"It's ultimately a celebration of hardware," he said. “With this concept, you get the original performance. These are the words that Susan Harris has written, and these are the performances that she has overseen as a director. »

Using "The Golden Girls" scripts as an episode outline allowed Hollingsworth to think about how he could spruce up the already crackling storylines. The pilot alone includes flying robots grafting a new hand for Dorothy, Blanche using an internal food generator to instantly create "Dateless Dessert for One", and a compact car joke with a timeless yet era-specific punchline.

“The format is so elastic,” he said. "The original scripts are the stepping stones, so - just like I did on 'BoJack' and 'Inside Job' - it's just heaping in jokes, not wasted opportunities, with visual jokes everywhere."

"I basically created a little universe where I was able to tag these great jokes - they're all alley oops and slam dunks - that when you talk about 'Golden Girls' you want to do a lot of references sports.”

The concept associated with the passion of Hollingsworth has already attracted the interest of the networks. Once news of his pitch broke, he was approached about applying the same animated methodology to other live-action comedies, like "Perfect Strangers" and "Welcome Back Kotter." But nothing compares to "The Golden Girls".

“These ladies are basically like the Marx Brothers of the 80s,” said Hollingsworth...