If “Sausage Party” was a food fight for independence, then “Sausage Party: Foodtopia” (currently streaming on Prime Video) is a battle for survival. Producer/creator Seth Rogen wanted to explore how the raunchy foodies become the dominant species and start a civilization as a mirror image of humanity à la “Planet of the Apes.”
“Foodtopia” picks up where “Sausage Party” left off eight years ago (minus the meta finale reveal that the characters are animated creations). After standing up to humanity and briefly establishing a safe haven (“Foodtopia”) devoted to eating and orgies, the foodies endure a massive flood. This forces them to rethink their plan for survival and organize their own civilization.
The returning cast includes Rogen (Frank, the sausage), Kristen Wiig (love interest Brenda, the bun), Michael Cera (deformed sausage Barry), David Krumholtz (Middle Eastern lavash, Kareem), and Edward Norton (neurotic Jewish bagel Sammy). They are joined by newcomers Sam Richardson (wealthy and powerful orange Julius) and Will Forte (a human named Jack).
Conrad Vernon returns as director of the eight-episode series, but unlike the feature, the cartoony CG animation is now split between two Vancouver-based studios: Stellar Creative Labs and Bardel Entertainment.
“Tonally, we still wanted to have a Pixar adventure feel, but putting that into a TV model and schedule was challenging,” co-showrunner Ariel Shaffir told IndieWire. “I think we managed to do it, but we structured it story-wise as one long movie. What the foods learn is that they were a little naive to think they could have a utopia. Seeing the parallels between the human world and a food world is one of the solutions to our heroes’ problem.”
The early weeks in the writers’ room were devoted to developing the rules of this new food society. Currency became the first issue, and they gravitated toward human teeth. “It was once this kind of symbol of oppression where [humans] were eating with them, and now they have it themselves,” co-showrunner Kyle Hunter told IndieWire. “So them taking teeth and trading them for goods is one idea that we all kind of sparked to very quickly and had a lot of fun with.”
They also got to develop characters more than in the feature because of their conflicting wants and needs. That’s where the parallels with humans came in. Despite their small food brains, they start to recognize similar patterns of behavior. “And some of their attitudes towards humans, which starts from a place of hate, starts to shift a little as they get to know some humans,” Shaffir said.
Meanwhile, what most excited Rogen was developing the action-adventure aspect in expanding the scope. He was particularly keen on food dying in disaster film style. “I don’t know if there’s something that he seems to really enjoy about just really horrific food death, but with the rainstorm at the beginning of the first episode, it was kind of like the movie ‘The Impossible’ and this big, larger-than-life thing,” Hunter said.
Dealing with the scale of the downpour and the flooding allowed for some funny deaths, but it was also the most challenging to animate. “That was the longest one to produce and it wasn’t on our traditional schedule, like the rest of the episodes were,” added Shaffir. “We needed a lot of water and storyboarding things down to the frames and the seconds of how much someone or something can be on screen for that amount of time. And the interaction between characters and water were giant complications that were handled really well by our animation team.”
