Mickey Mouse: Adventures in Disneyville

Mickey Mouse: Adventures in Disneyville (a.k.a. Mickey Mouse Shorts) is an American animated comedy television series created by Paul Rudish and produced for distribution by Disney Television Animation. The series follows Mickey Mouse, a plucky young underdog that works as an apprentice sorcerer in the Magic division at the AJAX Company, under the watchful eye of his stern boss, Yen Sid. Mickey is almost always at constant odds with his best friend and half-brother Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, who has the same job as him and is more sarcastic. Mickey is also caring towards his loyal pet Pluto, a bloodhound who always accompanies his master in his shenanigans. Prominently featured are Disney cartoon characters Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, Daisy Duck, Goofy, and many more living in the eponymous town of Disneyville, which is in turn is based on the iconic Disneyland theme park. The series has the slapstick feel of the earliest Mickey Mouse shorts while providing a modern update, and "presents Disney's legacy library of characters in a broad range of humorous situations that showcase their signature appeal, along with their long-beloved charm and sense of wonder". The animation is provided by Mercury Filmworks.

Rudish, who was the co-creator of the Cartoon Network television series Sym-Bionic Titan and also the series' executive producer and supervising director, initially pitched the series to Bob Iger while it was in its' early stages as Mickey Mouse, presenting the concept as a freshly re-envisioned interpretation of House of Mouse. High viewer approval ratings from the shorts led to a quarter-hour series, which will eventually be comprised of 80 episodes. Joseph Holt, Jenny Gase-Baker, Justin Martin, Cameron Thompson, and Juan Garrido are the series' art directors.

The pilot episode, "The Apprentice Sorcerers", was first released as a special preview on March 12, 2023, on Disney.com. The series will officially premiere on June 28 of that year on Disney+, followed by the releases on Disney.com and Watch Disney Channel. A total of 80 episodes are planned for the first season with a second season already in the works.

The series is a reboot to The Wonderful World of Mickey Mouse, which premiered on Disney+, back in November 18, 2020, to coincide with Mickey's 92nd birthday.

Premise
Mickey Mouse (voiced by Chris Diamantopoulos) is a plucky underdog who, employed by AJAX Industries, works at a day job as an apprentice sorcerer, which can be accessed by traversing through a mirror above his fireplace. Though dedicated to his work, Mickey often causes utter turmoil when he tries to improve his standard of living. Although he is in his mid-twenties, Mickey speaks with a chirpy falsetto voice. Chris Diamantopoulos described it as "a minor quirk, [a] kind of medical condition, we're not quite sure. A pint-size Walt Disney, but not. Perhaps he's a countertenor, perhaps he's always had it. He's a mouse; he knows he needs [a] squeak to go with it." Paul Rudish explained, "he's a mouse. Most mice are small and go squeak...It's not really a falsetto. It's just how he sounds."

Mickey serves under the rule of his stern wizard boss, addressed only as Yen Sid (voiced by Ben Kingsley), who usually neglects his welfare and is never actually seen in the series. His emotive, good-hearted, pet bloodhound Pluto (voiced by Billy West) regularly gets involved with his master's antics, wreaking unexpected havoc along the way. Though seemingly dim-witted, Pluto, who is now capable of speech, is much smarter than his master and can even give him helpful advice. For his part, Mickey, though sometimes annoyed by his lovable dog, feels a reluctant affection for him and will come to his defence if he is imperilled.

Mickey's best friend and half-brother is rowdy rubberhose rascal Oswald the Lucky Rabbit (voiced by Patrick Seitz). Like Mickey, Oswald has a rubberhose physique and can dissasemble his body when he feels strong emotions, but he has a more sarcastic personality and can sometimes become very jealous of Mickey's accomplishments. Mickey's popularity is objectively better than his, and Oswald tries to compensate for this by using his remote to fix his mistakes. Oswald's weakness is his extremely terrible luck.

Production
Paul Rudish, the creator of Mickey Mouse: Adventures in Disneyville, was born in Mississippi, with his father, Richard Rudish, having created the original Rainbow Brite franchise and characters.

After studying the Character Animation program at the California Institute of the Arts, Rudish found himself a job at Cartoon Network Studios, then known as Hanna-Barbera Productions, where he worked on Dexter's Laboratory, The Powerpuff Girls, and Samurai Jack by acting as a writer, art director, and character designer under the supervision of Genndy Tartakovsky and Craig McCracken. Described some of the final remnants of Hanna-Barbera, those three series helped to pave the way for the future landscape of Cartoon Network as a brand.

Later on, Rudish joined the production team of the Star Wars: The Clone Wars miniseries. His co-workers on that series, Darrick Bachman, and Bryan Andrews, had been classmates of his at Cal Arts and went on to collaborate with him on Mickey Mouse: Adventures in Disneyville. Rudish's last job before developing Mickey Mouse: Adventures in Disneyville into a television series was to serve as an executive producer on Sym-Bionic Titan. During his time on that series, Rudish received a phone call from Bob Iger, who was the CEO of the Walt Disney Company at the time. Iger had shown great interest in Rudish's potential as a creator and wanted Rudish to produce a brand new series of Mickey Mouse shorts in rite of modern audiences.

After his time on Sym-Bionic Titan, Rudish accepted Iger's proposal, and the resulting project, simply titled Mickey Mouse, was produced as part of the company's attempt to reintroduce their mascot to a new generation, debuting on June 28, 2013. Viewers worldwide watched the series through linear television on Disney Channel, video sharing website YouTube, streaming service Disney+, and even occasionally in theatres, with the success leading to a sequel series titled The Wonderful World of Mickey Mouse in 2020. Meredith Roberts, general manager of Disney Television Animation, said in 2021 that it was her favourite amongst the many animated series that had been produced by that point, commenting that she and colleagues "loved the humour in the basic simplicity of Mickey's exploits".

Even after Mickey Mouse finished its' original run, Rudish had no expectations that it would lead to an entire series. In 2022, he noted that his generation was the first in which people could become showrunners at a young age, saying, in the words of Tartakovsky, "Everybody before us were in their forties, at least, and so [our generation's experience] was a very different way to do something where we had no clue what we were doing and we were just trying to make each other laugh."When Mickey Mouse: Adventures in Disneyville received a series green-light, Rudish became, at age fifty-three, one of the oldest animation directors of that era. Speaking with the Los Angeles Times in 2019, Tartakovsky remarked about the network, "With Disney Television Animation, they were looking for both undiscovered and veteran talent, people that may have had a hard time getting in.[...]It became a great opportunity to do something. And as I got into it, I realized that they were also offering the creative freedom. They were letting the creators make the shows."

Rudish's former classmates Dave Wasson and Eddie Trigueros helped him out with Mickey Mouse. Soon afterward, Trigueros helped McCracken in directing episodes for Wander over Yonder, while Wasson became the executive producer for The Cuphead Show!. After finishing both projects, the group proceeded to a second short film for Mickey Mouse: Adventures in Disneyville, titled "The Apprentice Sorcerers". At the time, Tartakovsky was still not anticipating a series green-light for Mickey Mouse: Adventures in Disneyville. He went on to reminisce that, in the 1990s', he was simply having fun working on short films with his friends. Rudish and Wasson, who had been roommates shortly after college, went on to become regular collaborators on each other's series. Animation historian Colin Gorman noted a symbiosis between the two men, which he felt led to stylistic similarities between Mickey Mouse and The Cuphead Show!.

In August 2021, The Walt Disney Company ordered eighty quarter-hours of Mickey Mouse: Adventures in Disneyville, which were to be streamed in four batches throughout mid-2023 to early 2024. In addition to Tartakovsky, McCracken, Wasson, Andrews, Trigueros, and Bachman, directors and writers on Dexter's Laboratory included C.H. Greenblatt, Rob Renzetti, John McIntyre, and Careen Ingle. Jenny Gase-Baker serves as an art director on the series. Gorman described McCracken's role on Mickey Mouse: Adventures in Disneyville as that of Rudish's "effective second-in-command".

Cast

 * Chris Diamantopoulos as Mickey Mouse
 * Patrick Seitz as Oswald the Lucky Rabbit
 * Kaitlyn Robrock as Minnie Mouse and Fifer Pig
 * Billy West as Pluto
 * Tony Anselmo as Donald Duck
 * Bill Farmer as Goofy
 * Tress MacNeille as Daisy Duck
 * April Winchell as Clarabelle Cow
 * Jeff Dunham as Horace Horsecollar
 * Danny Pudi as Huey
 * Ben Schwartz as Dewey
 * Bobby Moynihan as Louie
 * Pat Musick as Fiddler Pig
 * Pat Fraley as Practical Pig
 * Katherine von Till as Snow White
 * Hynden Walch as Alice
 * Chris Sanders as Stitch
 * Jim Cummings as Pooh and Tigger
 * Daniel Radcliffe as Ranger C. Robin
 * Nick Mohammed as Piglet
 * Brad Garrett as Eeyore
 * Tom Kenny as Rabbit
 * Craig Ferguson as Owl
 * Benjamin Evan Ainsworth as Pinocchio
 * Joseph Gordon Levitt as Jiminy Cricket
 * Mae Whitman as Ms. Tinker Bell
 * Tom Hanks as Geppetto
 * Thomas Lennon as Honest John
 * Rob Tinkler as Gideon
 * Richard Ridings as Monstro
 * Eric Bauza as Dumbo
 * Josh Gad as Olaf
 * Greg Cipes as Bambi
 * Chad Doreck as Thumper
 * Katie Grober as Flower
 * Jodi Benson as Ariel
 * Wayne Brady as Genie
 * Kate Micucci as April
 * Riki Lindhome as May
 * Noel Wells as June
 * Blayne Weaver as Peter Pan
 * Maia Mitchell as Wendy Darling
 * Benjamin Diskin as John Darling
 * Scott Adsit as Baymax