‘Backyard Sports: The Animated Series’ In Works

Pablo Sanchez and the Backyard Kids have many more adventures in their future.

Playground Productions, which has been reviving the beloved video game franchise since acquiring the rights a few years ago, will develop 20, 11-minute episodes of Backyard Sports: The Animated Series, the team revealed at San Diego Comic-Con on Friday.

And, they’ve got an all-star cast returning after lending their voices to January’s special animated short that adapted the beloved video game series for the first time.

The voice cast includes Tiffany Haddish as Kiesha Phillips, Donald Faison as Dante Robinson, Christopher Mintz-Plasse as Dmitri Petrovich, Arturo Castro as Pablo Sanchez, Uktarsh Ambudkar as Achmed Khan, Deborah Baker Jr. as Kimmy Eckman, Michael Vlamis as Tony Delvecchio, Ashleigh Crystal Hairston as Sunny Day, Will Neff as Mr. Clanky, Vincent Tong as Kenny Kawaguchi, Joey Rudman as Marky Dubois, and Playground’s CEO Lindsay Barnett as Vinnie.

The series is based on Backyard Baseball — the full-scale revamp of the beloved 2D arcade-style classic that has captivated kids and adults since 1997. The newly rebooted game launched on July 9 for Steam for Mac and PC, with Nintendo, Xbox, and PlayStation versions arriving soon.

Playground Productions Chief Product Office Chris Waters will serve as showrunner, who executive produced the special earlier this year with Barnett — a former teacher who went in search of the rights to the video game franchise after struggling to find video games that would appeal to her young students. 

Earlier this year, Playground Productions released a short animated special episode titled “Sticky Situation, which brought the beloved franchise back to life with new content for the first time in well over a decade. In it, the iconic Backyard kids must help team superstar Stephanie ‘Bubbles’ Morgan find her lucky bubble gum with just 30 minutes to game time.

It premiered on YouTube before heading to Prime Video in March. No word yet on where these new episodes will live. The franchise is being revived independent from any major studios.

Juston Gordon-Montgomery serves as supervisingdDirector, Adam Aseraf and Sarah Nevada Smith will serve as head writers and co-EPs. Waters and Barnett will produce alongside Ari Pinchot and Stuart Avi Savitsky with animation services by Lighthouse Studios.

“I am beyond thrilled to announce our series today,” Barnett said in a statement. “The Backyard Sports characters have inspired imaginations for generations, and their stories have always felt bigger than the game itself. As Backyard Baseball expands with the new game on Steam and soon consoles, bringing these characters into new forms of storytelling feels like a natural extension of the Backyard universe.”

Playground Productions also teases there’s more to come from Backyard Sports. The company also teased a “Backyardiverse” is in the works to create “a connected world where sports, storytelling, and culture all come together.”