Disenchantment's roots stretch back 50 years. "Back in high school, I used to draw a little comic strip for my friends, called Tales of the Enchanted Forest," Groening told Global News, adding that when he was a kid, he read a startling psychoanalysis of fairy tales. "The author pointed out that the evil stepmother wasn't really the stepmother, but instead the stand-in for the evil mother. I've always taken fairy tales seriously ever since."
The idea for a series coalesced much later. Futurama executive producer Claudia Katz told NPR's All Things Considered that Groening pitched "the idea of Disenchantment probably in the second or third season of Futurama." Groening said it took 20 years to get the series off the ground "because animation is too darn hard to do." During the show's creation phase, he kept rejecting animators' mock-ups. As Katz explained, "Matt just kept going, 'No, no, no, no, no,' it's gotta be a lot more cinematic."
Ultimately, Groening connected with The Simpsons, Futurama, and Gravity Falls veteran Josh Weinstein to get the show to air (or streaming, as it were). That took a while, too. "We've been developing it for the last three years," Weinstein told The Hollywood Reporter. "Matt's had this idea for years and years. He has these notebooks that are filled with drawings and various ideas." And all these years later, those ideas have finally made their way to the screen.
