The announcement that there would be an Invader Zim movie was a surprising one. After so many years, it seemed like Nickelodeon and creator Jhonen Vasquez would never find common ground, and yet, here we are, and Invader Zim: Enter the Florpus is now available to stream on Netflix for anyone even remotely interested in the franchise. So, how did it happen, exactly? That’s what we wanted to know, and Vasquez was kind enough to explain.
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ComicBook.com spoke with Vasquez prior to the release of the film on Netflix, and in addition to revealing how he felt about coming back to Zim and his general thoughts on nostalgia, he explained how exactly the process of getting a Zim movie off the ground happened.
ComicBook.com: So how did all of this come together? Did Nick come to you, did you go to Nick? Was it a meeting of the minds kind of thing?
Jhonen Vasquez: Nick came to me. It was a process of several years, of Nick always poking me about more Zim stuff, which was never a … I never planned on any more Zim stuff. I didn’t completely close the door to it, but it was never tops on my list in terms of the kind of stuff that I wanted to do.
I wanted to do other things, and I tried to do a couple of other things, and there was some years sunk into development on a different project that never took off. At the end of which was just me being incredibly frustrated with losing all that time and not having anyone see what I’ve been working on for all those years. So it just worked out, because Nickelodeon was still … they were still poking at me about working on more Zim, or, “Are you doing anything, a series?”
Just they wanted to talk about Zim. And this time, I was just like, “Yeah, that sounds like fun after several years of hell, and it sounds like it actually might get made.” Which was a huge factor in my wanting to work on anything at that point. So we just started talking back and forth, and it turned into a movie.
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What do you think of Invader Zim: Enter the Florpus? Have you watched the Netflix special already, or are you saving it for a special occasion? Let us know in the comments, or hit me up directly on Twitter at @rollinbishop to talk all things animation!
Invader Zim: Enter the Florpus is now available to stream on Netflix. You can check out all of our previous coverage of the title right here. If you’re still on the fence, here is a brief excerpt of our official review:
“Invader Zim: Enter the Florpus should really set the parameters for all returning Nickelodeon shows going forward. It’s almost entirely self-contained, with little to no prior knowledge required, and manages to invoke what was amazing about the original show without kneeling at the altar of nostalgia. It’s just a new, good Zim story that happened to release on Netflix rather than Nickelodeon itself.”
