Josh Gordon & Will Speck Interview: Marvel’s Hit-Monkey

Marvel’s Hit-Monkey centers on the titular Japanese snow monkey as he is mentored by the ghost of an American assassin who was killed along with his tribe, putting him on a path for vengeance through Tokyo’s criminal underworld. Fred Tatasciore stars in the titular role alongside Jason Sudeikis, Olivia Munn, George Takei, Ally Maki, and Nobi Nakanishi.

Ahead of the show’s premiere, Screen Rant spoke exclusively with Hit-Monkey creators Josh Gordon and Will Speck to discuss the animated series, brining the obscure character to life, the future of the show, and more.

Screen Rant: How did this first start off, you guys being interested in wanting to be a part of this project in a creative capacity as well as producorial? 

Josh Gordon: We discovered this graphic novel back in 2010 and were immediately taken with, what’s to us, one of the best origin stories in the whole Marvel universe, even though it was a character we’ve never obviously heard of and has remained kind of a very cult, very fringe character. But to us, it had all the potential of all the main characters, it was filled with pathos and cinematic coolness and we just always felt like it deserved its moment in the sun.

The comics have also had ties to Deadpool and Spider-Man, what was it like trying to find the right angles to pull from while also staying in its own world?

Will Speck: It’s a good question, I think the origin story was so strong that we felt like we could slow things down and just start as a base of storytelling, you know, developing the relationship between the two of these characters and trying to invent a narrative and build off that great foundation, and not rush to cross-pollinate too soon. That said, what was exciting to us is who Hit-Monkey is.

It’s kind of a leg up to the little guy and we’re always really interested in characters that have less IP and less around them so that you can create your own fiction and build off of what’s so beautifully laid out. So in the series, we brought in other characters, like Lady Bullseye and Fat Cobra, that could thread into his world, but not become such a loud voice that it suddenly drove you into kind of that existing expectation and space. So at some point, we would love for him to overlap with Deadpool, who’s a great foil for him, or Spider-Man if it ever gets to that place, but I think right now, we just wanted to keep it really simple and dig into the richness that we felt like we’re in those two characters.

What’s interesting about Hit-Monkey is that while he speaks a bit in his tongue and Bryce is constantly talking, he’s still basically a silent protagonist. What is that like trying to build those layers and connections that the audience can grasp in such a character?

Will Speck: I think that’s always been something, for some odd reason, that’s been very appealing to Josh and me, are characters that don’t speak. I think Being There is one of our favorite movies and Chauncey Gardiner says very little in Peter Sellers’ eyes. We love Nick Park and his animation because whether it be Wallace and Gromit or the penguin that’s the foil, there’s always so much you impose on characters, especially in the animation space, that you have to interpret what their emotions are.

Josh Gordon: WALL-E is one of the greatest tragic cinematic movies ever made.

Will Speck: Exactly. We all grew up on Road Runner and those are full personalities, and Iron Giant and E.T. It’s always exciting to kind of find that challenge in a narrative space and I think for us, we wanted to avoid this being a talking monkey. [Chuckles] So it felt like giving that voice to Bryce gave it a great comedic thrust, because suddenly he had to develop a complete vocabulary nonverbally, but also Bryce had to fill in the space. It’s like doing 48 Hours, but Nick Nolte can’t speak. Suddenly, Eddie Murphy has to lean into a much more frustrated role and I think that was so exciting to us, the potential there and the challenge of that and what it led to comedically and emotionally, so we love that.

What was it like finding the villains for Hit-Monkey, because obviously this is a revenge story, but as you mentioned there’s Lady Bullseye and other supporting antagonists?

Josh Gordon: Building out the villains was obviously going to be one of the centerpieces of the show. In the original comic, it was Bullseye was sort of the great foil of that and for various reasons, we didn’t have access to Bullseye. Suddenly, Marvel said, “Well, what about Lady Bullseye,” and we thought, “Yes, that’s so much more original in a way and that’s so much more interesting.” Once we started to dig into her backstory, and she has not been used enormously before, it immediately became clear, “Oh, she’s so much more interesting to us and so much richer.”

Then we have this really big kind of reveal at the end of our season, which Marvel allowed us to do, which was just amazing. So Lady Bullseye became a huge, interesting villain in the story, but then there were also other characters, like Yuki and Fat Cobra and even Silver Samurai, that have been shown; Fat Cobra has been shown a lot, but not in this exact light and not necessarily comedically. So it was really fun to be able to round out our world with those Marvel villains and then also be able to build out the world of Japanese Yakuza and all those characters, it just suddenly created a really rich and underutilized environment for Hit-Monkey to inhabit.

Since you mention the reveal, the future of both Hit-Monkey and M.O.D.O.K. is unknown at this time after Marvel TV was rolled into Marvel Studios. Do you guys know of any future plans, have any ideas for where the show goes next, can you talk about it?

Will Speck: We don’t have any future plans, in terms of no commitments, but in terms of a Bible for the next 10 seasons, we have it very handy if you’d like to hear about it. [Laughs]

Josh Gordon: Certainly the second and third seasons were enormously detailed and drawn out. We wanted the first season to work as its own complete meal and it really does sort of operate almost like an extended feature in that way, where it has a very strong beginning, middle, and end and it does stand alone. But in terms of where these characters would go, including Lady Bullseye, there’s a lot to be had there.

What was it like for you from a creative standpoint hearing the news about the shuffling of hands of Marvel productions?

Will Speck: You know, we try to stay out of the politics of it. I think the good throughline is that we have support from the transition to continue with the show. We happened to be mid-production when that happened, so we weren’t in Los Angeles, we happen to be abroad shooting a sci-fi movie, so we were a little bit out of the slipstream, but it’s been really great. I think what’s a really fun throughline for us is Hulu, which has been the place that it was first set up and where it’s now streaming and they’ve really been great partners with us through that transition from the two Marvels.

Josh Gordon: But also to Marvel Studios’ credit, when they saw the show, they saw some of the episodes that had already been produced, they supported us. In some ways, it was kind of a dream project, because we were able to continue, nobody messed with us, nobody told us to change anything, they just sort of said, “Yeah, keep making the show the way you’re making it, it seems cool.”

What was it then like finding the cast for this show? Obviously, you’ve got Sudeikis, but there’s also George Takei, Olivia Munn, Ally Maki, what was it like finding everybody for their specific roles?

Will Speck: We really just abused our contact lists, because we had worked with these people. [Laughs] Early on, we reached out to them, because they’re people that we’ve wanted to work with, we did a movie with Olivia, we had worked on some stuff with Jason in the past, and they were all really our first choices. I think people understood the tone of the show pretty early on and I think our passion for it and our commitment to giving it a full sense of heart and humanity alongside the humor and the violence was interesting to actors to jump on.

We just feel so grateful, because I’m sure you know what it’s like, you get in a booth with those actors and it’s not just a one and done, you’re kind of growing and building the characters alongside their wit and imagination. Sudeikis, you know, has [acting] talent, but also an ability to write and lead with a very specific tone and brand. This was pre-Ted Lasso, and when you look at Ted Lasso and you think about Jason, he always grounds his characters with such heart, he wears his heart on his sleeve. He can go as dark as needed, but he always reins it back with that other side and I think that really gave Bryce something that we were hopeful of.

Because there was a version of Bryce, even in a voice performance, where you could check out his cynicism and his crass sense of the world and who wronged him and why. I think Jason gave it such dimension. What’s exciting is that each of these actors were our very first choice for each of these roles, so we just feel really grateful and lucky and felt like we were pinching ourselves every time you’re doing a session.

For my final question, the animation feels like a unique melding of so many different styles, how did you guys figure what the look of the show was going to be?

Josh Gordon: Early on, we knew a couple of things. One, we wanted it to feel cinematic, and that is why when we pitched the show, we said we want it to be anamorphic aspect ratio, which we can get from theatrical animation or anime, but it’s rare in TV. They supported that, which was really cool, and then we searched around for partners, and, obviously, we really wanted to find animation partners that got the humor and got the sarcastic wit, especially Bryce, but also of the stories in general.

But we also wanted to marry it to a cinematic [feel], not anime, but anime-adjacent feel. So we hired partners in the Philippines and India and Brazil and Mexico, as well as our lead house, which was Floyd County which had done Archer. So we felt like we were able to marry kind of a bunch of different threads of animation into something that’s pretty unique.

Marvel’s Hit-Monkey is now streaming on Hulu.

About The Author

Grant Hermanns
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Grant Hermanns is a News Writer, Interviewer and Hiring Manager for Screen Rant, having joined the team in early 2021. Way back in 2015 while still in his college days, Grant got his start in the entertainment journalism industry with creator-friendly site Moviepilot until it shuttered nearly three years later. From there he joined the staff at ComingSoon.net and was its Associate Editor prior to coming over to Screen Rant.

To say he’s a lover of film and television would be an understatement and when he’s not mass consuming either you can find him exploring the world of Dungeons & Dragons with friends or slowly making his way through his gaming backlog.

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