BoJack Horseman Horseman Creator Returning To Netflix – After Calling The Streamer Out For Its Biggest Controversy

It's been 10 years since a comedy about a former sitcom actor and anthropomorphic horse first graced our screens, with "BoJack Horseman" introducing Netflix as a serious producer of animation. Now, creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg and much of the "BoJack" team are coming for with a new Netflix animated series titled "Long Story Short."

According to Netflix, the show is about "a family over time," including their inside jokes and old wounds, as well as the history they share with one another (as we all do with our own families). Although "BoJack Horseman" is remembered for being a biting satire about Hollywood (or Hollywoo) with plenty of hilarious takes on celebrities (like its jokes about Andrew Garfield and lasagna), it was also a fantastic drama about generational trauma and how messed up families can be.

What makes this news kind of surprising is the fact that Bob-Waksberg has been openly critical of Netflix on several occasions in the past. There was the time he criticized Netflix for shrinking the end credits of its titles, calling it disrespectful to the artists who worked on those titles (which are the reason people subscribe to Netflix in the first place). Then there was the time Bob-Waksberg called out Netflix for allowing Dave Chapelle to get away with making transphobic jokes even after forcing "BoJack Horseman" to cut a joke for fear it would insult David Fincher.

Similarly, when Netflix canceled both "BoJack Horseman" and another Bob-Waksberg-produced adult cartoon series, "Tuca & Bertie," the creator publicly weighed in, stating, "I thought we'd go a couple more years" before Netflix pulled the plug on the show and calling Netflix out for not allowing "Tuca & Bertie" to find its audience. "It was my understanding that was, at the time, the Netflix model: to give shows time to build," he told the Los Angeles Times in 2019. "I think it's a shame that they seem to have moved away from that model."

The biggest reason this is exciting news is because, well, "BoJack Horseman" was a big deal. In addition to being one of Netflix's first major animated series, it helped make the streamer a powerhouse in animation, with the company having released as many (if not more) animated shows over the past decade as the likes of Cartoon Network, Adult Swim, and even Disney. Most importantly, though, "BoJack Horseman" helped legitimize adult animation in the prestige TV era. Before the series premiered, adult animation (at least on television) in the U.S. was primarily comedy-focused, with titles like "The Simpsons" and "Rick and Morty" defining what this kind of animation could — and should — do.

But when "BoJack" premiered, things changed. This was a show that not only embraced the zaniness of animation — from the anthropomorphic animal characters to wild situations like everything involving Character Actor Margo Martindale — but also provided the kind of character arcs and drama that you could find in prestige dramas like "Mad Men" and "Breaking Bad." Indeed, "BoJack" gathered the same kind of praise as those shows for its incisive look at complex subjects, including mental health and toxic masculinity. It also became one of the biggest shows to tackle the MeToo movement, and always did so with nuance — and laughs.

The success of "BoJack Horseman" as not only a cartoon but as a dramedy in the vein of "Fleabag" and "Atlanta" helped pave the way for animated shows like "Arcane" and "Blue Eye Samurai" on Netflix. It also inspired other streamers to try and compete with the company in that arena, which led to Prime Video releasing the criminally underseen "Pantheon" and "Undone."

/Film will keep you up to speed on "Long Story Short" as more information is made available.