Monsters at Work Creator Says New Series Is Actually a Love Story

Monsters at Work, the new Disney+ series that acts as a sequel to Monsters, Inc., plays out like a workplace comedy. Employees of a giant corporation try their best to navigate their day-to-day tasks and balance work relationships, all while the company itself is completely overhauling its business model. Monsters, Inc. has pivoted from scream energy to laugh energy, which means that everything about how the company operates has to pivot as well. It’s a wonderful idea for a workplace comedy, but Monsters at Work is aiming to be much more than that. According to creator and executive producer Bobs Gannaway, it’s also a love story.

Unlike many other love stories, Monsters at Work doesn’t follow a journey between two characters. It’s about the love of others vs. a love of yourself. The lead character, Tylor Tuskmon, is hired to be a scarer, but that no job longer exists, so he is sent down to join the outcasts that work in repairs and maintenance. He has no interest in being with those people, but learns to love them over the course of the series.

“At some point when we were writing the show, in the middle of production, someone in the room, one of the writers says, ‘It’s a love story,’” Gannaway told ComicBook.com in an exclusive interview. “It is. Tylor Tuskmon shows up with his goal to get on that former scare floor. He wants nothing to do with this new group. This is like, ‘I’ve been thrown in the basement with this wacky group and I’m in love with this other place,’ but over the course of the series, he starts to fall in love with this group. At the end, ultimately he’s got to make a choice. We knew we were working towards that choice, but that’s kind of like a love story in a certain sense.”

While Monsters at Work is a direct sequel to Monsters, Inc., it sounds like it has a lot more in common with Monsters University. That film could be described as a love story in more ways than one, as it shows the evolution of Mike and Sulley’s relationship, as well as their love for the misfits of Oozma Kappa.

What do you think of Monsters at Work so far? Do you see it as more of a love story?Let us know in the comments!

New episodes of Monsters at Work are released every Wednesday on Disney+.