Rick And Morty's New Voices Replacing Justin Roiland Will Be Soundalikes After All

Ten years in, the sounds of the future will sound slightly different

Rick and Morty celebrated its tenth anniversary with a San Diego Comic-Con panel on Friday. It was castless and writerless of course due to the SAG-AFTRA and Writers Guild of America strikes. Who was there was executive producer Steve Levy, producer Suzanne Belk, supervising producer Jacob Hair and lead character designer Elisa Phillips. However, it’s not as if the entire cast would’ve been present anyway, as the recasting process for Rick and Morty the characters is only nearly completed in the wake of Adult Swim cutting ties with co-creator Justin Roiland following charges of domestic abuse in January, about a month after the completion of the most recent season.

“We are closing in on the end of our process of the recast,” said Levy. Following an extended pause, he added, “It’s gonna be great. I am thoroughly impressed with everything that’s going on, including all the work on season seven.” A fan later asked Later, a fan asked whether the new voices would be anything like Roiland’s performance. It was then when Levy confirmed “It’s soundalikes. The characters are the same characters — no change.”

This came about as over at 20th Century Animation, producers of what was Roiland’s Solar Opposites and Koala Man (they cut ties with him as well), they unveiled a very drastic recast of Roiland’s role as Korvo Solar-Opposites, giving it to English actor Dan Stevens of Legion and the Beauty and the Beast remake. It’s clear that the voices established by Roiland are far more intrinsic for Rick and Morty that changing the performance in similar drastic ways would not sell well. This was reinforced by such answer apparently being met with thunderous applause from the audience. Levy said that he didn’t want the recast talks to divert attention from the efforts of the team still working on the show for the upcoming seventh season. “The show is as good as it’s ever been,” Levy said.

While no season premiere date has been set, Levy was vague yet emphatic as to when we should expect it: “Pretty dang soon.” All of season 7 is ready to air, season 8 has been written completely (it doesn’t sound like recording has finished for the actors) and season 9, as reported earlier, was begun by the time of the writers strike at which point it was paused. A new cold open with rough animation sketches that lacked Rick and Morty was screened for the crowd, as was the open for Rick and Morty: The Anime. The series’s 70 episode order in 2018 has turned into 7 additional ten episode seasons, which means the series is currently locked in through season ten.

Source: Variety