Saturday, November 2, 2024

Hulu and Adult Swim Both Dump Justin Roiland Over Abuse Charges

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A day after Warner Bros.’ Adult Swim announced it would be cutting ties with Rick & Morty star and co-creator Justin Roiland over charges of felony abuse that were recently made public, Hulu is following suit and dumping him from Koala Man and Solar Opposites.

“We have ended our association with Justin Roiland,” 20th Television Animation and Hulu Originals told Variety in a statement Wednesday.

Roiland’s former colleagues at Adult Swim were equally succinct on Tuesday.

“Adult Swim has ended its association with Justin Roiland,” Marie Moore, SVP of communications for Adult Swim/Cartoon Network/Boomerang, said in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter.

Roiland will keep his co-creator credit, but the cartoon sitcom will have only one showrunner moving forward, Dan Harmon.

Adult Swim, which airs the show responsible for bringing McDonald’s Szechuan sauce out of retirement, as well as the hordes of hungry, unruly fans that followed, was barely halfway through an astonishing order for 70 more episodes. Rick & Morty is so popular, in fact, that that its Season Six premiere in September was that Sunday’s most-watched program among women 18 to 34 and the most-watched non-sports show among male viewers 18 to 34 and the most-watched non-sports program overall that night for viewers 18-49, second only to House of the Dragon.

“Rick and Morty was the #1 comedy across all US cable in 2017, 2019, and 2021,” Warner Media said in a press release at the time. “Since launch, Rick and Morty ranks as one of the top series for HBO Max, both domestically and globally. Lifetime to date, Rick and Morty has been viewed over 10B times globally, across linear, digital, and streaming.”

Roiland was the star as well as co-creator of Polar Opposites, which was renewed for a fifth season in October, as well as an executive producer and voice actor on Koala Man, which debuted just this month.

As previously reported, it was revealed on Jan. 12 that a criminal complaint against Roiland had been filed by the Orange County District Attorney over claims made by former girlfriend he had lived with. Roiland was arrested in May 2022 and released on $50,000 bail. He was charged with one count of domestic battery with corporal injury and one count of false imprisonment by menace, violence, fraud, and/or deceit, to which he has entered a plea of not guilty.

Roiland’s attorney, T. Edward Welbourne, has called the claims against his client “inaccurate,” stating, “To be clear, not only is Justin innocent but we also have every expectation that this matter is on course to be dismissed once the district attorney’s office has completed its methodical review of the evidence.”


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