Seth MacFarlane says the Ted TV series will be the same type of crude R-rated comedy as its predecessor – and that fans will be "very happy."
The 2012 film, which starred Mark Wahlberg and Mila Kunis, follows a man named John who makes a childhood wish to bring his stuffed teddy bear to life. MacFarlane provides the voice and motion capture for Ted, a foul-mouthed CGI bear who seems to annoy everyone around him. Ted grossed around $550 million worldwide, making it Universal's highest-grossing movie of that year and the overall highest-grossing comedy of all time.
In a new interview with Collider, the Family Guy creator spoke at length about the new show, which Peacock ordered to series back in 2021. The series stars MacFarlane, Scott Grimes, Giorgia Whigham, Alanna Ubach, and Max Burkholder as a teenage John.
"It's going great," MacFarlane said of filming. "It's a prequel that takes place in 1993 and embraces that era, embraces the nineties and tracks what is essentially Ted's adolescence, I guess. Ted and John's adolescence. "
Though it's "unprecedented" to do a TV series where the main character is composed entirely of CGI, MacFarlane says the prequel will stick as close to the first movie as humanly possible.
"I think people who've enjoyed the first movie and enjoyed that tone are going to be pretty happy with what we're doing here," he explained. "We're going with what worked. But we're at the same time, exploring some new ground and kind of building up a past for John and Ted that we hadn't really delved into in the film. But I think fans of Ted are going to be very happy with this show."
In terms of censorship, MacFarlane says that there is none. The prequel will follow the same guidelines as the movie, so we can expect lots of swearing and lots of sexual innuendo coming out of the mouth of that teddy bear.
"There's no broadcast standards there. It's an R-rated comedy. You can say ‘fuck’, you can say whatever you want. The challenges for something like ‘Ted’ are more external," he said. "You're dealing with a climate that is maybe a little less friendly to comedy than it has been in the past. That's certainly something that we're mindful of because we do want to keep Ted Ted. We do want to make sure that it's not altered."
Though the series is currently in production, a release date has not been set. For more, check out our guide to the best new TV shows coming your way in 2022 and beyond.
