Huey and Riley Freeman might return to TV someday, but bringing The Boondocks back won’t be easy.
AllHipHop caught up with series co-writer Rodney Barnes at Fan Expo Philadelphia, where he talked about the possibility of a reboot.
Barnes didn’t shut down the idea, but said there would be challenges in bringing the show back for today’s audience.
“Never say never,” Barnes said. “But it’s a different time. When we were writing The Boondocks back in the early 2000s, social media wasn’t what it is now. These days, as soon as you offend someone, it’s all over X. Corporations don’t like that.”
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He pointed out that social media backlash and corporate caution make satire riskier.
“There’s not a lot of satire now. People don’t always see that the joke is saying something bigger than what it’s literally saying,” Barnes explained. “It’s just a different time.”
The animated series, based on Aaron McGruder’s comic strip, premiered in 2005 on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim programming block and ran through 2014. The show built a loyal fanbase with its unfiltered takes on race, politics, and pop culture.
It followed brothers Huey and Riley Freeman as they moved from Chicago to live with their grandfather in the mostly white suburbs of Maryland.
This wouldn’t be the first attempt at a comeback. A reboot was announced in 2019 ahead of HBO Max’s launch, with McGruder set to return. The plan was for two new 12-episode seasons.
However, the death of John Witherspoon, who voiced “Granddad” Robert Freeman, in October 2019, put the project on hold.
In 2023, Gary Anthony Williams, who played Uncle Ruckus, revealed the reboot was ultimately canceled because it was taking too long to complete.
“I had already recorded eight episodes of it as Uncle Ruckus,” Williams said. “But they decided they weren’t going to make it. They thought it was taking too long to get made. Anyone who knows animation knows I can record something today, and it won’t be out for at least a year. They were doing some fascinating things; they had changed up the animation style. So, it was a beautiful kind of thing.”
Along with Witherspoon and Williams, the original cast of The Boondocks included Regina King, who voiced both Huey and Riley, and Cedric Yarbrough as Tom Dubois.
Watch the full interview with the writer below:
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