On October 28, 2019, animator and YouTube personality Vivienne Medrano celebrated a milestone: the release of “Hazbin Hotel,” a 30-minute pilot for an animated musical-comedy about a rehabilitation program that aspires to help repentant Hell demons reach Heaven.
Produced and directed by Medrano and brought to life by a team of several dozen independent animators, the pilot was self-funded by contributions from Medrano’s Patreon subscribers, who helped support her and the project with monthly donations during the episode’s two-year development. edit, process. When she finally uploaded it to YouTube, Medrano was relieved and excited — it felt like the culmination of something that had been a long time coming, and she was eager to show her work to her small but dedicated fan base.
She was not prepared for what happened next. Almost immediately, the video went viral, attracting fans of adult animation, Broadway musicals and comedy, who, based on comments and other online reactions, were charmed by the original voice and punk, carefree style of the play. Within months, it racked up tens of millions of views and sent Medrano’s Patreon subscriptions skyrocketing. Fans coalesced into a fervent fandom that spawned fan fiction, tribute art, and elaborate costumes. (As of late January, it had nearly 95 million views.)
“I’ve been an Internet artist basically my whole life, and I’ve had an audience,” Medrano said in a phone interview earlier this month. “But when the pilot came out, it just exploded – there were so many people so quickly and so suddenly. It became this huge success in a way I never expected.”
Medrano just celebrated another milestone: last week’s release of “Hazbin Hotel” on Amazon Prime Video. Produced by A24 and animation studio Bento Box Entertainment, the series’ eight-episode first season takes the familiar tone and spirit of the YouTube original pilot and expands it to the scale of a prime-time animated series.
“There’s been so much hype and so much anticipation,” Medrano said. “At this point I’m like, ‘Oh my God, I hope it works out.’
The new Hazbin Hotel, like the pilot, is about Charlie Morningstar (voiced by Erika Henningsen), the princess of hell and owner of the eponymous store, where she plans to restore demons so they can one day see the pearls gates. A kind of fire-and-brimstone sitcom with a tone somewhere between the dark wit of “Bojack Horseman” and the wry, whimsical misanthropy of “Don’t Trust the B____ in Apartment 23,” the series is as dark as it is cheerful, humming . with an optimistic attitude, while also dealing with tumultuous issues.
In one episode, Angel Dust (Blake Roman), an adult film star prone to malicious innuendo, tearfully admits to being abused by his sadistic boss. In another, he brings in an X-rated movie to show and tell, much to the groans of his friends. Other characters burst into song without warning: The series is a full-on musical filled with comedy shows, reminiscent of “One more time with feeling”, a musical episode of ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ or the movie ‘South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut’.
Medrano began fantasizing about “Hazbin Hotel” in high school, when she began drawing illustrations that would serve as the basis of these characters and their world. Medrano said her first creation was Alastor, the “fun pseudo-villain and mysterious Cheshire Cat character” voiced in the series by Amir Talai. Medrano’s younger fans, in particular, seem drawn to Alastor, he said. “I’m glad it can be loved by the same kind of audience it was made for.”
Medrano began thinking more seriously about how to bring the world of “Hazbin Hotel” to life during college at the School of Visual Arts in New York. “That’s when I realized that this would make a really good TV show and that all these characters would work really well together,” he said.
Her original idea, she said, “was more of a slick comedy” that could fit into a world of adult animation then dominated by shows like “Family Guy.” But towards the end of her student years, the genre opened up, with new shows appearing “much more grown-up not only in their gratuitousness but also in their sentiment”.
“I kind of had this awakening,” he said. “Like, wait, adult cartoons can tell these kinds of stories? That really opened the door for me.” The success of shows like “Bojack” and “Rick and Morty” showed her there was an audience for complex animated stories with characters that evolve and aren’t always funny. This started the creative journey that led to the ‘Hazbin’ pilot.
In the wake of the pilot’s release and success, Medrano considered using Kickstarter to raise money to produce another episode or even an entire season, among other options. He worked on comics and music videos to flesh out the universe, developing an outline of how a larger story could unfold.
Then A24 got hold of it. “We watched the pilot and were extremely impressed with how she pulled it off and basically made it on her own,” Ravi Nandan, head of television at A24, said in an interview. “We fell in love with it. It’s kind of out of the box for A24, but what really impressed us was that voice.” The company offered to finance and develop the pilot into a series, and Medrano agreed.
Melissa Wolfe, the head of animation at Amazon MGM Studios, was already familiar with “Hazbin” and Medrano when she heard that A24 had produced a season of the show and was shopping it. He asked to see it and within minutes he had “kind of a goosebumps when you know it’s an amazing show,” he said. Amazon bought the series and has already ordered another season.
Medrano isn’t the first artist to parlay a viral hit into a professional TV venture: Shows like “Adventure Time,” “Insecure” and “Broad City” have also emerged from YouTube, and other creators with proven online audiences have been given a shot to prove themselves on the big stage. (Remember the line “$#*! Says My Dad?”)
But what’s remarkable about “Hazbin Hotel” is the extent to which Medrano’s vision has been preserved in the transition from YouTube to Amazon. The “Hazbin” pilot was weird and quirky, with quirky humor and mature themes, and so is the series, even though it looks bigger, shinier and more expensive.
One big difference: None of the voice actors from the pilot are reprising their roles. Medrano chose to hold new auditions for each character, and none of the original cast made the cut.
The recast didn’t go particularly well, at least initially. In a Post on Twitter 2021, voice actor Gabriel C. Brown, who voiced Alastor in the pilot, wrote that he “would rather be in a smaller project that appreciates me than a bigger project that doesn’t.” Michael Kovach, who voiced Angel Dust in the pilot, he wrote on Twitter: “The former voice cast has not received any information, and anyone who knows probably can’t discuss it due to an NDA.”
Medrano chose to recast because “the challenge of this show is that it’s a musical,” he said, adding, “It takes performers who have a strong singing background and who could also do the voice of the character.” Medrano listened earnestly fans that were he was concerned when he heard that the voice actors had been replaced, believing it may mean the series was a departure from the pilot. But aside from the voices, Amazon’s “Hazbin” is otherwise the same.
“I know there are a lot of other creators who had to compromise their vision and that didn’t happen here,” Medrano said. Scripts he thought might be too dark or weird even for A24’s boundary-pushing standards were approved, he said.
Whatever its faults or merits, “Hazbin Hotel” is Medrano’s vision alone. Launching the series on Amazon is just the latest step in the journey that began in her childhood imagination.
“It has to be proven on YouTube and then proven on A24 and then proven on Amazon,” he said. “Now I hope it will prove itself to the world.”