Aqua Teen Hunger Force's Dave Willis & Ned Hastings On Boston And New Episodes

Screen Rant spoke with Aqua Teen Hunger Force's Dave Willis & Ned Hastings about the new season and the unreleased Boston Bomb Scare episode.

Screen Rant recently spoke with some of the creators of Aqua Teen Hunger Force about the show's return, their new film, and the unreleased episode centered on the 2007 Boston Bomb Scare they were responsible for. ATHF started in 2000 on Adult Swim's late-night block of adult animated series that entertained countless fans and inspired much of the humor of today's comedies. However, Aqua Teen went on to become one of the world's most recognizable adult animated series — though not without some controversy, like the infamous 2007 marketing campaign for Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film For Theaters.

A marketing stunt for 2007's Movie Film for Theaters went horribly wrong when Boston police mistook small boxes plastered with ATHF characters, The Mooninites, as explosive devices and effectively shut down parts of the city. It made national news, apologies were given, and $2 million was paid to the city of Boston in restitution. The series' creators made an entire episode revolving around the incident that was never aired. Now, series creator Dave Willis and producer/editor Ed Hastings are willing to share more details on the episode with Screen Rant.

Related: Dave Willis & Matt Maiellaro Talk Aqua Teen Forever Plantasm

Dave Willis and Producer/Editor of the series Ned Hastings sat down with Screen Rant to talk about making new episodes of the series and how ATHF has changed over the years. They also spoke about the recent Boston Comedy Festival event, where the unreleased "Boston" episode was shown to a small group of lucky fans.

Screen Rant: The "Boston" episode that's not planned to release to the public is filled with epic character deaths, a shocking Marvel cameo with Robert Downey Jr., and some of the greatest animation [adult swim] has ever put out. Why won't fans be able to watch it even years after Movie Film For Theater's infamous marketing campaign? Why not release the episode as part of an anniversary edition of the film?

Dave Willis: That's a great question. I have no idea. We have the animatic of it, and why [only] show it to 400 very lucky people [during May's Boston Comedy Festival]? Sure, we Willy Wonka'd the episode, and only those people could get to see it, and that's usually how we used to make the show. All it would take is to finish the [episode's] animation. The Boston episode is how we intended to respond. We had worked on something back in 2008 or 2009, and it wasn't very good, then we rewrote it. But then the plug got pulled on it, and our boss thought better of doing it since we had paid two million bucks for restitution. Who knows how much we would have had to pay [to Boston] to apologize for this episode?

But we always had the script and always loved it. Thankfully we got to realize it, and the roomful of people [at the Boston screening] really loved it too. It's a nice bridge or conciliatory gesture, I'll say.

Ned, is there a trove of Aqua Teen Hunger Force clips or even episodes like "Boston" that will never see the light of day? Or does everything seem to get deleted by the Mooninites?

Ned Hastings: I feel like this is the only one that's ever been made that didn't get released in some form. [Episodes] get rewritten and reconfigured, and they always start out longer than they end up. So there's lots of stuff chopped out of every episode and loads of stuff reconfigured in every episode. We could probably fill a pretty decent DVD set with deleted scenes if we decided to hang on to them in some way. They'd be really hard to track down at this point.

Dave Willis: If we were ever to come across a time machine and get back to 2006 when people bought DVDs.

I really miss the days of those special features and commentary tracks. Speaking of commentary, the Mooninites deliver some of the best commentaries in the series.

Dave Willis (using his Mooninite Ignignokt voice): You have your finger on the pulse of the public, don't you? One finger...the middle one.

The Mooninites have a moment near the end of the Aqua Teen Forever: Plantasm film where Err calls Ignignokt dad. Is their species asexual or does Err have a mother somewhere?

Dave Willis: Oh God, I can't go into that since that's a big part of the movie trilogy. TRILOGY?! Oh, what did I say?!

Ned Hastings: Cat's out of the bag now.

Dave Willis: I think he's calling Ignignokt "Dad" because he's being a dick. It's very clear that Ignignokt is not Err's dad.

Ned Hastings: We've had Meatwad say that to Frylock before, too, like, "Okay, Dad!"

Dave Willis (using his Mooninite Ignignokt voice): I have your daddy right here.

Related: Where to Watch Aqua Teen Forever: Plantasm

Speaking of misplaced partage, if you did a Star Wars: Force Awakens-esque soft reboot with newer characters meeting the older characters and going off on their own adventures, what kind of sentient foods do you think the new characters should be? Would they befriend Carl or one of Carl's relatives?

Dave Willis: That's a deep question.

Ned Hastings: A sentient protein bar.

Dave Willis: Electrolytic paste. Full of protein for running.

Ned Hastings: Yeah, that pack of goo that just comes in a pack for marathoners when they start to hit a wall.

Dave Willis (using his Meatwad voice): I got a cousin, his name be Gristle. We be having Gristle. Get ready for the adventures of Meatwad and Gristle.

Dave Willis: It'd be really funny to introduce a vegan wrap, and within 12 seconds, Shake has already killed it.

Ned Hastings: We have actually found something that Carl would hate even more than the Aqua Teens.

Dave, how has writing an adult animated series changed from 2010 to writing one now in 2023?

Dave Willis: Ah, that's a great question. I think it has to do with the outlets and who [you're writing for]. Not to get crazy technical about the business aspect of things, but it seems like streaming channels have figured out that people love adult cartoons that are done well. They love them and rewatch them, which is a real key to streaming. I feel like the whole business has awakened to this. We obviously weren't the first cause there's The Simpsons, South Park, and Beavis and Butthead. Then when [adult swim] basically predicated on that good understanding that you might have as many 50-year-olds watch the network as eight-year-olds.

Everybody tries to do cartoons, but not everybody is very good at it. Like King of the Hill, it's a show that could have been shot on a studio. It's a funny and enduring classic, in my opinion. There are a lot of family-based cartoons that don't use the art form in a fun way. We don't have any boundaries at all. King of the Hill obviously had some boundaries, but [they] still made a rich and enduring show.

The short answer is I don't feel like a lot of streaming networks know how to make enduring cartoons that people can love and appreciate. For every Rick and Morty, there's a lot of "also rans" that are poorly animated, and you're not really invested in the characters. You can't write them like a sitcom because if you take a sitcom script and say it can be animated, it's not the same. The jokes are different, and the approach is different, in my opinion.

That's a long way of saying that it's changed a lot. There's a big marketplace for it. There's still not a lot of people doing what [adult swim] did back in the heyday with the crazy, great, and insanely creative stuff. I'm not just patting us on the back, just everything across the board, even the stuff that didn't work. Just fun and interesting TV, you know?

In recent interviews, it sounds like progress on the new season of Aqua Teen was progressing well. Are there any updates you would like to give fans regarding the new 5-episode season 12 and how it's coming along?

Dave Willis: I don't want to tell you the plot lines, and I don't think I could do them justice anyways. They're just better to watch. It's been really fun. They look really great and polished. Almost kind of looks a bit like a reboot. I mean, we haven't done episodes in eight years.

Ned Hastings: They look more [similar] to the new movie, [Aqua Teen Forever: Plantasm]. In contrast to the old episodes, it looks a little more polished, and it's gonna look better on pretty screens.

Dave Willis: Yeah, they're really rich. They were a blast to make. It's all pretty much all the same crew doing it all with the same editors. Matt and I are writing everything. Dana [Snyder] and Carey [Means], and everybody sort of knows their roles. They come in and add their own special sauce to it. It's really rewarding to have this, and now over two decades later, it's just [become] the funniest and easier thing to do. It's just a blast. [We're] not fighting uphill. Everybody knows this show is born from our souls, and that's how it gets made.

Ned Hastings: We don't have to convince people that it's funny anymore, either. You don't have to sell it to anybody. You don't have to say: it's gonna work, I promise.

Dave Willis: Network has been great. They're pretty hands-off. They're just like, make sure it's not longer than 11 minutes and 15 seconds.

Speaking of the industry and the current turbulent environment going on between streaming services and writers not getting paid what they should be, what advice would you give aspiring writers who want to get into the industry and someday make their own series?

Dave Willis: Don't get into the industry. Don't do this. It's nothing but heartbreak.

Ned Hastings: Have you considered retail?

Dave Willis: I would steer towards YouTube. Find your voice. Who knows, maybe you'll find some money there? I'm not saying there aren't careers. We started out on an island in Atlanta.

Without getting too detailed, the Writers Guild strike affects us all. It's all TV just going through a different pipe. Larger companies are asking to pay less just because it goes through [a different] pipe, but it's all the same water. This is just PVC, it's not zinc! There's a reckoning coming, and it's insane. All these streaming [platforms] will be ad based in a few years, and you'll wonder: what happened?

I think when we all started the show, we were at the luckiest place on earth. We happened to be at a great place where we had a great boss that was willing to give us a lot of free reign because we didn't cost anything, and I don't know if those situations can ever get replicated again.

Ned Hastings: The network was sort of the right age, and the whole company had been around long enough and had been part of Time Warner long enough to where it was like, "okay, we can try this now. We can play with this experiment." I guess Cartoon Network had been on long enough for them to realize that they do have eyeballs [watching them], but not after 10 o'clock.

Dave Willis: I would say if you want this again, you would need to kill Matt Graining and construct a skin suit out of his hide.

Ned Hastings: Do not do that.

Ned, the fans and I would love to hear your story on how somebody started off editing Space Ghost Coast to Coast and eventually leveled up to become a producer of one of the world's most popular adult animated series.

Ned Hastings: Well, I'm a producer in the sense that I am an editor that they've allowed to, as Dave calls it, bring the special sauce and put my DNA into what I do. I edited on these most recent episodes and because of the way we make the shows, all of our editors get to kind of put in their own spin on things. They get the script and the audio, and they kind of put it together in a certain way. It's been a learning process, too, because I've kind of learned what works and what doesn't work and what I like and what I don't like to develop my own rhythm and style.

If the whole existence of [adult swim] is a series of lucky breaks, [my position] is also a series of good timing and lucky breaks. I got hired as a freelancer on an episode of Space Ghost and then didn't hear from anybody for about a year. [I] came back and did another one, and then after that, it was off to the races and I was there, kind of on the ground floor for Aqua Teen and also for [adult swim].

I think I'm only a producer in the sense that I get a lot of input into how I want my part of the show to work. Thankfully Dave and Matt have given me a lot of leeway in that regard, and that's been the most rewarding part. If I was just a button pusher that was only doing somebody else's bidding all the time, it would not be nearly as fun, and I would not have nearly as much pride in it as I do.

Dave Willis: In Aqua Teen, unlike most cartoons, it gets created with each step along the way. It's not Ned just cutting to us. We write long and keep carving away at [the script]. We'll make up new jokes and rewrite it, voice actors ad-lib, we come up with stuff in the studio, and animators pitch stuff. It really gets created every step of the way.

Ned and I started our career together. It felt like we spent all night for a whole year cutting that Conan O'Brien episode of Space Ghost. Every night, reinventing it. Ned's always brought this incredible sense of timing. And Ned is also a trivia genius. He has an encyclopedic knowledge of both comedy and all things Aqua Teen at this juncture. He's sort of our glossary, along with some other guys that work with us, like John Brestan and Nick Ingkatanuwat. It's a real collaborative group. It's fun.

Aqua Teen Hunger Force started as a spin-off series of Space Ghost Coast to Coast. Have there been any thoughts of doing a shared universe adventure storyline that could possibly bring Space Ghost or even Brak into the Aqua Teen stories?

Dave Willis: We did the "Baffler Meal" episode of Space Ghost years after Aqua Teen was already established, but people go on the wiki and say that that was the pilot. It wasn't. We almost did that because we thought it was funny, but at the time, our boss did not care for it. He was saying there wasn't enough Space Ghost, which there wasn't.

I don't know that they do really exist in the same [world] as we view it. But I will say that we pitched a Space Ghost movie during COVID that I loved. I'd still love to make it when all this is said and done. I feel like we can make it for like $8. It was really fun. Matt Maiellaro, Matt Harrigan, and I wrote a little outline for a Space Ghost movie, and I still hold out hope [it can get made].

The "Boston" episode highlights how the Aqua Teen gang really made a mess of things to promote ATHF Colon Movie Film For Theaters. Going into the past, what are some other moments in history that you'd like to inject the Aqua Teen into and see how they mess it up?

Dave Willis: I definitely heard something recently that sort of rivaled the Boston thing about the Dave Matthews Band dumping their tour bus sewage on people in Chicago. While parked on a bridge, they dumped it all over a tour boat going under them. Unbelievable that that guy did that. That should be something that Dave Matthews would have to answer for at every concert. I know he didn't press the lever, but I mean he's like, "Alright, here's a song called Crash Into Me, and no, it's not crashed like the fecal matter that crashed on the boat below. We paid restitution for that and we've apologized many times." I don't know how that connects with the Aqua Teen's but man, that's something very funny.

At this point, it feels like you and the team have written the final episode of the squad's story a few times. Which one do you feel is the most definitive ending for the character arcs that have been building over the years? Or do you still feel like that's ahead?

Dave Willis: It's a cartoon. It can be around forever, right? We can always write our way out of a painted corner. I loved how we ended the series back in 2015. I thought it was great. You know, Meatwad going back to the old house. He's been married and middle-aged. Then the song by Patti Smith and then it ends, and then we air another episode the following week. It was classic. Through and through in our show, the final episode is not the final episode.

Ned Hastings: That Patti Smith song is so emotional and so effective. I can still remember the first time we put that scene together, just thinking, "Oh wow, that actually emotes, that has heart. That's perfect.

Dave Willis: Then we have another episode. Just kidding, we don't care. If you run all the episodes together, they form a loop, a perfect ouroboros snake swelling it's tail. It's like Finnegans Wake. Read it to the end and back to the beginning again.

Aqua Teen Hunger Force's initial run ended in 2015 and produced an incredibly heartfelt final episode titled: "The Last One Forever and Ever (For Real This Time) (We ****ing Mean It)," however creators Dave Willis and Matt Maiellaro did not mean it. The new film Aqua Teen Forever: Plantasm was released this year, and the series is set to return with season 12.

Aqua Teen Hunger Force is available to stream on HBO Max.

Jason Hon is a Game Reviewer, Anime/Manga News Writer, and content creator behind the Mega Manga Mondays Podcast and the Comedic Gaming YouTube Channel Honzy and Friends! Within him lies a colossal passion for Gaming, Shonen, and making people laugh. He graduated from The Los Angeles Film School and is working hard towards becoming a Professional Nerd. He lives with his wife and two cats in Iowa, USA.