Rick and Morty co-creator Justin Roiland recently admitted that the ultra-hit animated series was originally a hard concept to sell. Most would have a hard time believing such a thing, seeing as the series is returning for a sixth season with a large fanbase that can't get enough of its theories or its humor. But the Adult Swim show, which premiered back in 2013, was nearly a victim of poor timing.
Thankfully, Roiland and fellow co-creator Dan Harmon pushed through to give audiences one of the most iconic animated sci-fi shows yet. In a recent roundtable with Screen Rant and CBR, Roiland and Rick and Morty star Spencer Grammar reflected on the early years of the Emmy award-winning series and how they had managed to reach a successful fifth season with a highly-anticipated sixth one on the way.
I can tell you we were having a hard time getting a sci-fi concept through the gate. This was around the time that Futurama was cancelled. Sci-fi was not profitable; it was not doing as well. Executives saw sci-fi and they were like, “Eh-eh, nope, that’s a not—it’s a dirty word.” So that, for sure, was the climate at the time. And then we were able to get one past the goalie.
It's no secret that science fiction is often treated as the redheaded stepchild of television, either. If a project doesn't already have a strong IP behind it, executives can often be too afraid to give it a chance—and even ones that get produced are sometimes discarded by impatient viewers who cannot abide the extreme serialization of genre shows.