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".

Conception
Mickey Mouse: Adventures in Disneyville originated with one of Paul Rudish's initial concepts of Mickey and Oswald starring together in their own shorts. While working on Mickey Mouse, Rudish drew a preliminary sketch of both Cuphead and Mugman, the two main characters of the Cuphead franchise. These two characters would eventually become the very basis of the dynamic of Oswald and Mickey respectively, although the concept went unused until Rudish started expanding the concept for Disney Television Animation. To further contrast the two characters, Rudish determined that Oswald would be pessimistic, while Mickey would be focused on positivity. In an interview, Tartakovsky said, "Oswald came first. He was really the star of the show to me. He was so much fun. Later on, I started on Mickey and he took over."

The names Mickey and Oswald were both found in name books; "Mickey" caught Rudish's attention for sounding optimistic, while "Oswald" appealed to him because of its uniqueness and because he felt that it complemented that character's rubber-hose ingenuity. Before settling on these options, Rudish had considered basing the series around the Epic Mickey series of games. Explaining why he discarded this idea, Rudish said that "story was just too much to be incorporated head first" and that the resulting tone wouldn't be able to fit the Disney brand. The title Mickey Mouse: Adventures in Disneyville was not settled on until around midway through production of the series' pilot episode, "The Apprentice Sorcerers".

The ages of Mickey and Oswald are meant to be nebulous. Although Rudish suggested that Mickey is intended to be about twenty-six years old and that Oswald is "a year older", he also stressed that he would "never want" to specify Mickey's exact age. Rudish wrote Dexter as a plucky, rebellious "farm boy underdog" who loves to have fun and explained, "I'm not saying he's from Mississippi, but there's a reason he grew up on a farm, just like I had growing up in Mississippi."

The sibling dynamic in Mickey Mouse: Adventures in Disneyville was partially modelled on the relationship between Poppy and Branch from the Trolls franchise. Comparing Mickey to Poppy and Oswald to Branch, Rudish acknowledged that Poppy was most likely a "pest" to her boyfriend while they were hanging out. Another time, he reminisced that as kids, they could each be a "pain in the ass" to the other. To illustrate one of the parallels between their chemistry and the series, Rudish noted that Poppy had kept Branch from being isolated in those days, much like Mickey attempts to help Oswald see the bright side of life.

Rudish determined that Mickey should keep his falsetto because the character "considers himself a very endearing individual, and all well-known icons have chipper voices." During one interview, Rudish suggested that viewers should decide for themselves whether or not the character's voice is a medical condition, saying that "[n]obody knows" whether the character is "pretending to be a young child" or is speaking naturally. Although Rudish noted in a separate interview that Mickey's voice is not meant to denote any specific defect, he revealed in a Reddit AMA that his personality was partially inspired by Charlie Chaplin.

Rudish also drew inspiration from his experiences from breaking into the animation industry. He explained that, like Mickey, he viewed himself as quite insignificant - and even though he worked for many major studios, his roles on most series were often minor. Speaking with Animation Magazine in 2020, Rudish explained, "When I first started with Mickey Mouse, I wanted to return him to his glory days...We never tried to be too heavy-handed with the shorts, but if you look at the underlying themes of the show, it's about a little mouse trying to make it big." Rudish noted that when he was a child, he was less confident than the character, telling The New York Times, "The one thing about Mickey, if he doesn't get it right, he'll never give up. He's not afraid to be himself."

Meredith Roberts wrote in 2018 that Mickey was originally designed "to be more of a shining icon for the Walt Disney Company"; she continued, "his body was short and rounded and his design was simple, with a rubber-hose aesthetic and relatively little detail... Since Rudish knew he was developing Mickey for television, he purposely limited the design to a degree, designing the nose and mouth, for instance, in a Cartoon Network style to animate easily." This simplistic style was influenced by The Powerpuff Girls, as well as by Dexter's Laboratory. Roberts noted though, that in contrast to those cartoons, Mickey Mouse: Adventures in Disneyville is "staged cinematically, rather than flat and close to the screen, to leave space and depth for the action and gags in the lab". Rudish was also influenced by My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Jellystone!, and Samurai Jack.

Original Run
Mickey Mouse: Adventures in Disneyville will stream on Disney+ on June 21, 2023, and the following day on Disney Channel. It is currently planned to be the first in a brand of Disney+ original cartoons, which will include spinoffs featuring characters from the Muppets, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Star Wars, Ice Age, Pirates of the Caribbean, the works of Matt Groening, and many more, in what will eventually be known as the Disney Extended Universe. A second season has recently been ordered, which will premiere in 2024.

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

Broadcast
By June 2023, an estimated total of 100 million viewers in the United States will have seen the series, and it will stream in 160 countries, being translated in 34 languages, eventually reaching over 135 million viewers worldwide by October 2023.

On October 16, 2023, Disney Channel will air its' "100 Years of Wonder" marathon featuring Mickey Mouse: Adventures in Disneyville among other programs. On November 18, 2023, it will broadcast a 12-hour "Happy Birthday Mickey Mouse!" marathon in 96 countries and 12 languages. This marathon will feature fan-selected episodes of Mickey Mouse: Adventures in Disneyville and culminate by premiering two new episodes of Season 2 before its' planned debut in 2024.

Reception
Mickey Mouse: Adventures in Disneyville is one of the highest-rated original series on Disney+. Internationally, it garnered a special mention for best script at the 2024 Cartoons on the Bay animation festival in Italy. From 2023 onward, a Mickey Mouse balloon will be featured in Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade alongside other iconic characters. The series was part of Disney Channel's 20% ratings surge during mid-2023. On July 7, 2023, the series was the network's highest-rated original telecast among households (3.1), kids 2-11 (7.8), and kids 6-11 (8.4), with a delivery of almost 2 million homes. By July 31, 2024, it is estimated to score the highest household rating (9.0) and delivery (2,000,000 homes) for a Disney+ original series. Mickey Mouse: Adventures in Disneyville is also one of Disney Channel's highest-rated original series of 2023.

Critical Reception
One of Disney CEO Bob Iger's favourite animated shows is Mickey Mouse: Adventures in Disneyville. Singer Adam Young of the Owl City project stated in an August 2023 Billboard interview that he is a fan of the series, stating, "I watch a lot of cartoons because I'm an introvert. I actually watch more cartoons than movies."

Shortly after the premiere of its first season, Mickey Mouse: Adventures in Disneyville was hailed as one of the best new series on Disney+ by the Daily Herald.

Patrick Cavanaugh of ComicBook.com gave the series a positive review, describing it as "nothing but fun and excitement [...] filled with laugh-out-loud comedy, modern settings, timeless stories, new music, and the unmistakable classic art style of the Mickey Mouse shorts." Ethan Anderton of SlashFilm called both the creation of The Wonderful World of Mickey Mouse and Mickey Mouse: Adventures in Disneyville the "best thing Disney has done with their trademark characters outside of theme parks in a long time," praised the animation for its style that recalls old animated shorts, and complimented the humour of the two shows, writing, "Not only is the animation outstanding, but it's pretty funny too." FP Staff of Firstpost reviewed the series positively, saying it holds "nostalgic value as old characters revisit," called the animation "whimsical," and found the show entertaining. Emily Ashby of Common Sense Media rated the show 3 out of 5 stars, found agreeable the depiction of positive role models, citing the friendship between characters, and praised the humour of the series, writing, "This show focuses on presenting stories that are fun and funny. [...] Some episodes involve mild stereotypes based on the characters’ roles and the story’s setting, but they’re always meant to be funny."

In 2023, Jeremy Jahns named Mickey Mouse: Adventures in Disneyville to his Critic's Choice list, recommending it for the "young of all ages". In a 2023 top 10 list by Entertainment Weekly, Mickey Mouse: Adventures in Disneyville was ranked as the fourth best Disney Television Animation series. In 2024, Mickey Mouse: Adventures in Disneyville will be named 36th best animated series by IGN, whose editors remarked, "Aimed at and immediately accessible to children, Mickey Mouse: Adventures in Disneyville is the beginning of a new combined extended universe of treasured Disney properties that plays on two levels, simultaneously fun for both kids and adults." In his 2024 book Animation: A World History Volume IV: The Modern Age, Giannalberto Bendazzi called Mickey Mouse: Adventures in Disneyville "visually and verbally innovative". He considered the series to be a groundbreaking work of contemporary art, likening its visual style to both cartoons from the 1930s' and the designs of Hanna-Barbera. David Perlmutter wrote in his 2024 book, The Updated Encyclopedia of American Animated Television Shows, that Mickey Mouse: Adventures in Disneyville reintroduces these classic icons through an approach that contains "verve and originality". Perlmutter called the series more "complex" than it first seems. He praised the staging of comedy throughout the series and wrote that Mickey Mouse: Adventures in Disneyville is "much more effective (and funny) than it would have been under a director less committed to the project [than Rudish]."

Legacy
As affirmed by Giannalberto Bendazzi in Animation: A World History Volume IV, Mickey Mouse: Adventures in Disneyville, along with Bill Motz and Bob Roth's The Ghost and Molly McGee, helped re-define the legacy of Disney Television Animation, both for being works "in which both story and comedy are predominant", and for underlining their graphic aspect through well-written characters. Critic Mark Kermode claimed that both artists were "at the forefront of a brand new wave of innovative, creator-driven television animation, whose previous wave began in the mid-1990s with the likes of Genndy Tartakovsky's Dexter's Laboratory and Craig McCracken’s The Powerpuff Girls." The show has also been credited for "kickstarting" the studio's ascent to superstardom and establishing Rudish's career.