Finn Brooks: Hey, good to be here — though I have to say Hope has been texting me all morning and I genuinely did not know what I was walking into.
Hope Sterling: Okay I was spiraling a little, I'm not gonna lie. Because Maxwell Atoms — the creator of The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy — he just came out and said Cartoon Network killed a cosmic horror musical. With songs. Already written. The thing was called 'Billy & Mandy Destroy Us All (A Cosmic Horror Musical)' and it just... got shelved.
Finn Brooks: Okay the title alone — 'Destroy Us All' — that is not a vague pitch. Someone sat down and named that.
Hope Sterling: Right? And CN's reason was that kids didn't know who Billy and Mandy were anymore, which — the show ran for seven seasons! Seven!
Finn Brooks: Hmm, I want to sit with that number because seven seasons is not cult-tiny. That's a legitimate run.
Hope Sterling: It's a real show! And the name recognition gap exists because CN stopped airing it — they literally created the problem and then used it to say no to Atoms.
Finn Brooks: So the completed script, the original songs, multiple other continuation pitches also rejected — this is, what, years of work just sitting in a folder somewhere?
Hope Sterling: In a folder. Potentially forever. And that's the part that's actually making me feel things.
Finn Brooks: But wait — that's the part I keep getting stuck on, because it's not just unfortunate, it's like — imagine you stop stocking a product on the shelf, and then six months later you go 'see, nobody's asking for it, no demand.' You did that. You made that happen.
Hope Sterling: Oh that's exactly it. That's the whole thing right there.
Finn Brooks: CN stopped airing The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy, the name recognition dropped, and then they literally told Atoms — like, to his face, essentially — kids don't know who Billy and Mandy are anymore. Because you stopped showing them Billy and Mandy! That's — I mean, that's not a reason, that's a confession.
Hope Sterling: Okay but I do want to flag — this is all coming through Atoms. There's no Cartoon Network statement. No pushback from their side. So we're working with one account here.
Finn Brooks: No, that's fair — and it matters. Like, we don't actually know what CN's internal reasoning was beyond what filtered through him.
Hope Sterling: But even if you take his account at face value — and honestly the Underfist situation kind of backs it up? That special aired October 12, 2008, was supposed to launch a whole spin-off series, and it just became the finale by accident because his contract expired. That's twice. That's a pattern.
Finn Brooks: Right — and the show launched in Grim & Evil in 2001, went standalone June 13, 2003, ran seven seasons — this thing had a whole life. The gap didn't come from the property failing. It came from CN pulling it.
Hope Sterling: And then citing the gap they made. I cannot.
Finn Brooks: The network built its own blindspot and called it data. And meanwhile Atoms had a completed script, original songs — actual finished work for Billy & Mandy Destroy Us All — sitting there. That's the thing that doesn't fit the 'low recognition' excuse. You don't write the songs for a vibe.
Hope Sterling: But that's the thing people keep getting wrong — I keep seeing it in the threads, everyone's framing this like Atoms walked in with a vibe, a mood board, a PowerPoint, and CN said no thanks. And it's like, no. He had a completed script. He had multiple original songs. For 'Billy & Mandy Destroy Us All (A Cosmic Horror Musical).' That is finished work.
Finn Brooks: The songs are the part that gets me. You don't commission songs for a pitch.
Hope Sterling: You don't! And now — okay this is the part that actually makes me feel a little sick — that script, those songs, they sit in a folder that CN owns. Not Atoms. CN. So it's not even like he can post it, release it, let fans have it. It's just... in corporate limbo.
Finn Brooks: Wait, that's the lost media angle, right? Like it's not lost-lost, someone has it, but — actually that might be worse? At least lost media you can imagine doesn't exist. This exists. In a filing cabinet. Inaccessible.
Hope Sterling: Legally inaccessible. To everyone including the person who made it.
Finn Brooks: And the @emeraldappul post — the one that hit over two thousand views in October — the reason it landed so hard is specifically that. People aren't just mad about a rejection, they're mad that finished art is sitting behind a paywall nobody can pay.
Hope Sterling: Mm, and like — I mean, Atoms can't even leak his own songs. That's the part. The work belongs to the machine that said no to it.
Finn Brooks: And honestly? The Underfist situation in 2008 is the earlier version of exactly this — and that pattern across the whole decade-plus is the part we need to get into, because it makes the musical rejection look way less like a one-time call.
Hope Sterling: Yes — and there's a whole other layer to that, the cult audience versus what CN's metrics actually measure, which is structurally broken in a way that's kind of devastating.
Finn Brooks: The Underfist thing is — okay, because that's 2008. That's not vaguely related precedent, that's the same playbook run earlier. Atoms designed that special as the launch vehicle for a whole spin-off series, October 12, 2008, and when his contract expired it just became the finale. By accident. The network didn't even have to say no explicitly — they just let the clock run out.
Hope Sterling: And then — wait, this is the part — in 2003 they made him choose. Like, CN literally said pick one: Billy & Mandy or Evil Con Carne. He chose Billy & Mandy. He gave up the other show for this one. And then they still ended up blocking every continuation anyway.
Finn Brooks: That is — yeah, that's brutal actually.
Hope Sterling: He sacrificed Evil Con Carne! For a show CN then refused to continue! Like what was even the point of making him choose?
Finn Brooks: And this is — okay, I think this is actually the structural problem, because the fan fury online is real, @ToonHive's Underfist recap post from October 13th got 2,900 likes, @emeraldappul's thread pulled over two thousand views, and none of that moved anything. Not one greenlight. And I don't think that's cynical, I think that's just — networks need current-kid name recognition data, not Twitter likes from adults who grew up watching this.
Hope Sterling: Which stings specifically because 2,900 likes on a recap post about a 2008 cancellation is actually a lot — that's not a dead fandom.
Finn Brooks: No, it isn't dead — but the metric CN needs is, like, a ten-year-old in a focus group saying 'I know who Mandy is.' And that kid doesn't exist right now because CN stopped airing the show. So the cult audience's sentiment is just — it doesn't plug into the formula.
Hope Sterling: So the fans are screaming into a room where nobody's taking attendance. That's genuinely — I mean, that's the devastating part of this whole thing.
Finn Brooks: And unless something structurally changes — a streaming platform picks it up, someone licenses it away from CN — the pattern just... continues. Underfist 2008, the musical rejection, whatever comes next. It's not one bad call, it's the policy.
Hope Sterling: The one detail I cannot let go — Maxwell Atoms wrote the songs. Like, the actual songs. For 'Billy & Mandy Destroy Us All.' That's not a pitch, that's a finished thing, and it belongs to Cartoon Network forever.
Finn Brooks: Mine is the Underfist clock-out. They didn't even have to say no — his contract just expired and the October 12, 2008 special became the finale by accident. That is so much colder than a rejection.
Hope Sterling: Ugh, it really is. Okay — I mean, who do we toast? The songs that exist in a filing cabinet? Atoms, who — I don't know, honestly just the audacity to keep pitching after all that?
Finn Brooks: We toast the songs. Wherever they are.
Hope Sterling: To the songs. In the filing cabinet. May they one day escape.
