Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane has a live-action TV series adaptation of his Ted movies headed to Peacock. MacFarlane will write and executive produce the Ted TV series, and will once again voice “Ted,” the foul-mouth teddy bear come to life through a magical wish. MacFarlane’s Fuzzy Door Productions partner Erica Huggins will also co-executive produce the series, while UCP and MRC Television are producing it, as part of MacFarlane’s deal between UCP and Fuzzy Door. Details about what this Ted TV series will be and which human actors will be involved is all being kept under wraps for now.
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Ted (2012) was Seth MacFarlane’s directorial debut, and a lot of fans of his animated series (Family Guy, American Dad!, The Cleveland Show) were wondering if MacFarlane’s zany mix of edgy comedy and classic TV/movie nostalgia would translate to a live-action feature film. It didn’t help that the film’s main attraction (the living teddy bear) initially got dragged for being a knock-off of his Peter Griffin voice from Family Guy.
However, Ted turned out to be a big hit with viewers, once they got a full look at both the teddy bear character and MacFarlane’s signature vision successfully translated to live-action. Ted earned nearly $600 million worldwide on a budget of $65 million and was Universal’s highest-grossing blockbuster movie of 2012 – something no one expected. That made it easy for the studio to greenlight a sequel. Ted 2 didn’t fare quite as well: the sequel failed to earn over $100 million in the US, and only drummed up $216.7 million worldwide, on a budget of almost $70 million. That drop-off in interest proved to be steep enough for Universal to put the franchise on ice.
When Ted 2 ended, Ted had married his Boston beau Tami-Lynn McCafferty (Jessica Barth), and reached a new level of maturity in his relationship with buddy John Bennett (Mark Wahlberg). It’s really hard to imagine Wahlberg having a heavy presence in this Ted series on Peacock, but that’s not a massive problem. It’s easy to imagine the Ted series picking up with Ted after the events of the sequel movie, in new status quo – either with Tami-Lynn or as a divorced single bear having to live on his own for the first time (i..e, no John). It would be just as easy for the series to reboot the entire concept for TV, with a new origin story and set of human characters that are better fitting for the TV format.
We’ll let you know what develops with Peacock’s Ted TV series. If you want to give Peacock a try, you can sign up here.
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