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David Alpert has helped turn some very dark, very bloody ideas into some of the biggest franchises on the planet, despite being a very pleasant and nice guy. As CEO and co-founder of Skybound Entertainment, he and Skybound Chairman and legendary creator Robert Kirkman have shepherded juggernauts like The Walking Dead and Invincible from comic-book pages into multi-platform universes spanning TV, games, audio, and more.
Invincible is now poised to become the longest-running animated original on Prime Video, with six seasons confirmed and season four doubling the viewership of season one. I caught up with David, who previously joined me on my podcast, How Success Happens, to get Skybound’s recipe for keeping fans obsessively hooked.
Dan Bova: When you made season one of Invincible, were you like, “We’re definitely going to do this for a lot of seasons” or was it a big question mark?
David Alpert: We had always hoped that we’d get to do this for a long period of time. But it wasn’t the easiest sell. We’re saying, “Hey, we want to do an hour-long, super R-rated, very, very violent, serialized television show about superheroes. And our goal is to really capture the look and feel of ’80s after-school and Saturday morning cartoons.” People were like, “What are you talking about?” But when we finally found the right partner, our goal was really, yes, we want to tell the story from beginning to end, and we’re committed to doing that.
When you look at the success you had with The Walking Dead, was there anything that made you say, “This is a winning formula” or “Don’t do this”?
We always look for white space. One of the things that was really exciting about Walking Dead was there were no serialized horror television shows—ever. We knew horror worked, we knew people loved horror and serialized drama, but there hadn’t yet been that horror serialized television show, so we thought that was a huge opportunity. Similarly, with Invincible, the idea that it was an hour-long, 2D, serialized superhero show with a lot of violence meant there was no comp, which on one hand is a risk, but on the other hand we’re like, we know people love animation, superhero stories, and serialized drama; we thought it was the combination that made it really unique.
You’ve got such an incredible cast of actors voicing these characters. Are people banging down the door: “Can I be an alien? Can I be a demon?”
We’re getting crazy people—the names are crazy, the level of people coming out from major pop stars, hip hop stars, and actors wanting to be in it. Movie stars are like, “This is the thing my kid won’t shut up about, so we need to find a way to be associated with it,” which has been a huge opportunity for us to get amazing voice cast. The team we’ve assembled has done an amazing job, and there are a couple of surprises coming that I think will be pretty unique.
Have you had to turn down a superstar because it just didn’t work?
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