Netflix greenlights adult animation series based on Exploding Kittens card game

Exploding Kittens began as a crowdfunded card game

Netflix has commissioned an adult animation series and mobile game based on the Exploding Kittens card game.

The series, which comes from showrunners Shane Kosakowski and Matthew Inman, will debut in 2023 while the mobile game will launch next month.

The greenlight represents the first time that the global SVoD service has launched a series and game from the same franchise.

Executive producers are: Bandera Entertainment’s Mike Judge, Greg Daniels and Dustin Davis; and Chernin Entertainment Group’s Peter Chernin and Jenno Topping. Also exec producing are Elan Lee and The Oatmeal’s Inman, who created the Exploding Kittens franchise.

The animated series starring Tom Ellis, Abraham Lim, Lucy Liu, Ally Maki, Mark Proksch and Sasheer Zamata sees God and the Devil sent to Earth in the bodies of chunky house cats.

Netflix said the mobile game “retains the same classic gameplay where players draw cards aiming to avoid the Exploding Kitten.”

“The co-development of a game and animated series breaks new ground for Netflix,” said Mike Moon, Netflix head of adult animation.

“And we couldn’t think of a better game to build a universe around than Exploding Kittens – one of the most inventive, iconic and original games of this century.”

The announcement comes four months after Netflix launched its first slate of mobile games, led by a pair of games set in the world of its hit sci-fi series Stranger Things.

In 2015, Exploding Kittens raised around US$8.7m on Kickstarter from 219,000 contributors, making it the most-backed campaign ever on the crowdfunding platform. Since then, it has sold over 18 million games.