Even if you don’t think you’ve watched an Adult Swim program, you most likely have. A channel specializing in comedy and animation content for a PG-13 to R rated audience, Adult Swim is home to some of the most popular shows to-date, including Rick and Morty, Bob’s Burgers and Futurama. Now, the network is expanding its library and desire for inclusion with its first Spanish language program.
At New York Comic Con in 2023, Adult Swim’s announced its newest project—a stop-motion series called Women Wearing Shoulder Pads. The series will follow a wealthy Spaniard living in Ecuador as she journeys through the complicated world of love, family, commercials and South American guinea pigs. The new series will mark Adult Swim’s first-ever Spanish-language series, along with its return to the stop-motion animation format. Each episode will be about 15 minutes long and feature an all-female cast.
Produced entirely in Spanish with English subtitles, the series comes from creator Gonzalo Cordova—who is best known for his work on the TV series Tuca & Bertie and Adam Ruins Everything—and in partnership with the Mexico-City based studio, Cinema Fantasma.
“While we’ve all seen a million stop-motion shows in Spanish featuring an all-female cast centered on the plight of guinea pigs,” Michael Ouweleen, the president of Adult Swim teased, “Gonzalo’s unique voice and the visually rich stop-motion from Cinema Fantasma meant that we couldn’t pass up on Women Wearing Shoulder Pads.”
Shows like Women Wearing Shoulder Pads follow a trend of increasing Spanish language media in the United States over the past several years. In 2019, the U.S. Census found that nearly 68 million people in the United States spoke another language at home that wasn’t English. Of this population, over 61% said that they spoke Spanish at home. With an increasing rate of Hispanic, Latinx and other Spanish-speaking communities in the United States, it would be no surprise if these rates have increased over the last five years.
During this time, several film and television networks, educational platforms and government agencies have released informative and entertainment mediums alike in both English and Spanish. Providing these resources and forms of entertainment is not only good for business—increasing viewership and consumption for networks—but makes media more inclusive and accessible to audiences.
“While we’ve all seen a million stop-motion shows in Spanish featuring an all-female cast centered on the plight of guinea pigs, Gonzalo’s unique voice and the visually rich stop-motion from Cinema Fantasma meant that we couldn’t pass up on Women Wearing Shoulder Pads.” – teased Michael Ouweleen, president of Adult Swim
At publication, information on casting, release dates and episode titles had not been released, but more news can be expected within this next year.