In ‘Monsters at Work,’ the Scary Part Is the New Business Model

You’ve got to feel sorry for Tylor Tuskmon.

After finishing at the top of his university class and receiving the business career offer of his dreams, Tylor arrives for his first workday to find that the company’s chief executive has just been jailed. The new leaders have adopted a radically novel approach and no longer need his furiously studied, exquisitely honed talent. He’s going to have to start at the bottom — literally — with the basement maintenance crew.

Another sad story of a bright young graduate in a pandemic-ravaged economy? Not exactly. Tylor is a monster — the kind with horns, claws and an underbite that would be an English bulldog’s envy — but a monster who finds himself in singularly human, and ultimately singularly comic, circumstances.

“I have a million ins to this particular character,” said Ben Feldman, who voices Tylor in “Monsters at Work,” the new animated television sequel to one of Disney’s most beloved blockbusters: the 2001 Pixar film, “Monsters, Inc.” “I constantly feel like the most inexperienced person in the room.”

Feldman, speaking by telephone after his recent star turn in the NBC comedy “Superstore,” may be an animation newbie, but he has joined the pros. “Monsters at Work,” a 10-part series debuting Wednesday on Disney+, also features the voice work of John Goodman and Billy Crystal, reprising their original movie roles as James P. Sullivan (Sulley) and Mike Wazowski. (No Rumpelstiltskin-like names in this crowd — these monsters could be listed on your neighbors’ mailbox.)

In separate phone conversations, Goodman and Crystal both enthusiastically characterized the Sulley-Mike partnership as “the Laurel and Hardy” of Monstropolis, or, as Crystal put it, echoing Stan Laurel, “two minds without a single thought.”

Nonetheless, Sulley, whom Goodman described as “a big oaf who’s grown a lot and matured,” and Mike, whom Crystal called the “runt of the litter” (he is an eyeball with arms and legs), are now the newly appointed heads of Monsters, Inc., the energy company at the center of the film and the series. In addition to Tylor, other unfamiliar faces at the company include the hulking but effervescent Val (voiced by Mindy Kaling) and the furry, fatherly maintenance boss, Fritz (Henry Winkler).

Although “Monsters at Work” is coming 20 years after the movie, “Monsters, Inc.” has remained in the public eye, not to mention Disney’s consciousness. In 2013, Pixar released “Monsters University,” a prequel that traced Sulley and Mike’s bond to their college days. It, too, was a box office hit, and Meredith Roberts, senior vice president and general manager of television animation for Disney Branded Television, said there had been some speculation that Pixar might release a third “Monsters” film. But in the interim, Disney broached the idea of a series.

“I think enough time had passed that we felt we could remind people of how beloved these characters are — and expand their world,” she said in a phone interview.

“Monsters at Work” begins the day after a pivotal event near the first film’s conclusion, when the Monsters, Inc., staff, which had been harvesting energy from children’s screams, learns that laughter is a superior power source. Now the goal is to become little ones’ comic dreams instead of their worst nightmares. But poor Tylor has trained his whole life to be scary.

“Great stories are told when there’s lots of change,” said Bobs Gannaway, the series’s developer and executive producer, in a phone interview. But he also wanted the series to be character-driven, centered on Tylor’s struggles to adapt after he realizes, “‘I was going to be the quarterback, and now I’m the water boy.’”

Tylor’s relegation to the Monsters, Inc. Facilities Team, or MIFT, is like being assigned to the mailroom — only dangerous. Fans of “Monsters, Inc.” will recall the factory’s rapid conveyor belt of doors that through high-tech mechanics and supernatural mojo become portals to the human world: specifically, children’s closets. The business has had many unfortunate accidents.

“When I was writing the pilot, and Tylor is taken down to meet his new co-workers, I wanted to have something that just made him run for his life — the idea you could actually die on this job,” said Gannaway, a Disney veteran.

Tylor, of course, survives, but has many cartoonish mishaps. He also feels vastly uncomfortable around his MIFT colleagues, including the so-called Banana Bread, who speaks only in toots that sound suspiciously like flatulence, and Duncan (Lucas Neff), a resentful antagonist who often cuddles a small, snarling creature that looks like a glowering ball of fuchsia yarn. When Tylor questions Duncan’s right to keep pets on the job, Duncan responds in outrage: “Pets! He’s my emotional support animal!”

This combination — of silly slapstick and wry humor, of a children’s fairy tale and an adult office comedy — is at the series’s core. From the computer-generated design, which exactly mirrors that of “Monsters, Inc.,” to the neon pastel palette (Gannaway described it as more sophisticated than a juvenile show’s primary colors), Disney is aiming for not only young viewers but also grown-ups.

“That’s why we decided it would make more sense to do this on Disney+,” Roberts said. “Disney Channel tends to be more focused on the kids.” (Conveniently, the streaming service offers both of the foundational Pixar movies.)

When Disney approached Gannaway over three years ago, he knew he wanted to captivate the original films’ longtime fans. That meant continuing the distinctive Mike-and-Sulley dynamic. Here, Sulley is the straight man chief executive, while Mike, a hyperkinetic second-in-command, strives to help the company — and the anxious, still ambitious Tylor — by running a comedy class.

“It’s like a bunch of driving school misfits,” Crystal said, adding about Mike, “And he’s trying to teach them to be funny when he’s really not that funny himself.” With Crystal improvising some of his lines, however, the lessons become hilarious. (Crystal added that he loved portraying Mike so much that two years ago, he placed one of the monster’s footprints next to his own on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.)

The series brings back many other “Monsters, Inc.” characters, with one notable exception: Boo, the toddler who accidentally ventures into the factory and captures Sulley’s heart. The attachment between the huge monster and the tiny girl gives the movie unexpected poignancy.

“Everyone agreed that we wanted to leave it to the world to decide how that relationship continued,” Gannaway said.

But even without a human child, “Monsters at Work” has a tender side, reflected in an episode when Mike has to babysit for an infant monster. In the film, he does his best not to be won over by Boo, but the series “gives him a chance to be more vulnerable,” Crystal said.

With Mike and Sulley upstairs as management, the new basement characters complement Tylor. Each has a distinctive silhouette, as well as traits to push Tylor’s buttons. The relentlessly optimistic Val, the franchise’s first female monster in a prominent role, evolved so much during development that Disney recast the part.

“We wanted to make very sure that Val didn’t come across as a cheerleader for the team,” Gannaway said.

Disney approached Kaling, who was excited about voicing Val. “I said, ‘Make her orange and pink and shaped like a neck pillow, and I’m in,’” Kaling said in an email.

Val is all that but also earnest and strong. At first an annoying acquaintance, she emerges as Tylor’s friend, and their relationship “becomes a really great buddy comedy,” Roberts added. Their interplay grows to be as central as Sulley and Mike’s in “Monsters, Inc.”

Unintentionally, the series has something else in common with its cinematic inspiration: a premiere during difficult times. “Monsters, Inc.” opened two months after Sept. 11; “Monsters at Work” is debuting in the waning days of Covid-19, when families are still coping with grief and loss.

“What I think the kids and the world want right now is to laugh and be entertained and have a good time and escape to a fun world,” Gannaway said. “There’s no agenda to teach a lesson.”

The audience will, however, observe how friendship and teamwork function. (Or don’t.) They will also get a behind-the-scenes look at Monsters, Inc. and at a maintenance crew whose real-world counterparts often go unsung.

“I liken it to Disneyland,” Gannaway said. “We’ve all been to Disneyland, and we walk around Disneyland, but not very many of us have gotten to go to the secret underground tunnels. We’re taking you to the secret underground tunnels.”