The Venture Bros. TV-MA | 22min | Animation, Comedy, Sci-Fi | TV Series (2003– ) 76 episodes The bizarre animated escapades of pseudo-heroic scientist Dr. Rusty Venture, his competent, high strung bodyguard, and his two over- enthusiastic sons. Creator: Christopher McCulloch Stars: Christopher McCulloch, James Urbaniak, Michael Sinterniklaas, Patrick Warburton The Venture Bros. is an American animated television series that was created by Christopher McCulloch (also known as "Jackson Publick") and premiered on Cartoon Network's late night programming block Adult Swim with a pilot episode on February 16, 2003 and its first season began on August 7, 2004. It is considered to be an action/adventure series with comedy-drama elements. The show has been renewed for a seventh and eighth season to consist of ten episodes each. The Venture Bros. chronicles the lives and adventures of the Venture family: well-meaning but incompetent teenagers Hank and Dean Venture; their emotionally insecure,
unethical and under-achieving super-scientist father Dr. Thaddeus "Rusty" Venture; the family's bodyguard, secret agent Brock Samson, or his temporary replacement, the reformed villain and pedophile Sergeant Hatred; and the family's self-proclaimed arch-nemesis, The Monarch, a butterfly-themed mega villain. Show creator McCulloch was one of the main writers for the Saturday morning animated series The Tick. He created The Venture Bros. storyline sometime prior to 2000. After working for the television program Sheep in the Big City and the live-action version of The Tick, McCulloch set to turning The Venture Bros. into an animated series. The Venture Bros. was originally conceived as a comic book story for an issue of Monkeysuit. McCulloch realized that his notes were too extensive for a short comics story and proposed that Comedy Central air The Venture Bros. as an animated series, but the network rejected it. Although the first draft of the pilot script was written in the spring of
2000, the premise was not greenlit until around the summer of 2002 by Adult Swim. McCulloch had not previously considered Cartoon Network because he "didn't want to tone The Venture Bros. down," and was unaware of the existence of the network's late night adult- oriented programming block, Adult Swim. With the revised pilot, production began in autumn of that year, and the pilot was first run on February 16, 2003\. The first season of the series was completed and premiered in 2004, and it was added to the summer schedule in August.
