The creator of Too Many Cooks is back with the trippiest horror movie of the summer

'I guess I was a weird kid'

If you haven’t thought of Barney in the last 30 years, good news: One person has been carrying the flame for all of us. Later this summer, Casper Kelly, the creator of Too Many Cooks and The Adult Swim Yule Log, makes his jump to feature films with a trippy horror movie in which a Barney-esque TV mascot named Buddy (voiced by Keegan-Michael Key) turns out to be capturing kids in his magical TV show dimension. The cast also includes Cristin Milloti and Tophee Grace in a connected subplot with Black Mirror vibes.

The words "evil Barney parody from the creator of Too Many Cooks" is typically enough to get most people onboard, but if you're still not sold on this nightmarish premise, Polygon caught up with Kelly as part of our 2026 Summer Preview to find out where the idea came from, how he convinced the Emmy-winning Milloti to join the cast, and all the other kids' shows that inspired him. Check out the interview below.

Polygon: I've been telling people about this movie and describing it as Barney, but if Barney was an evil demon. Where did the idea come from?

Casper Kelly: J.D. Liftschitz, the co-founder of [Weapons and Companion production company] BoulderLight, was interested in doing a Barney-esque horror movie. I wasn't sure about it because I feel like, with the mascot horror genre, every time something enters the public domain, they do a horror movie about it — like Minnie Mouse.

But then we were talking about it and I got the idea, because I remember as a kid watching TV shows, I thought the actors lived in that world and I would always wonder, Why don't we see them going to sleep or all this other stuff? I guess I was a weird kid. I started to get drawn into that idea of, If people live in that world, what's it like and what's their understanding of life? And to me, it kind of makes sense metaphorically if you're in a certain family or in a certain institution that's trying to control you and limiting what you know. So that was the entry that got me excited about this movie.

For a pretty weird movie, you managed to get a really great cast. Was it difficult to convince Cristin Milloti to sign on?

No, she liked the script. We did have lunch before she officially came onboard. She wanted to feel like there was real emotion to the movie, which is in the script. It's not like my usual Adult Swim stuff. I mean, that can have emotion, but I'm trying to have emotional moments and resonance. I want the audience to feel something beyond being entertained and amused and scared. And I think she was very drawn to that. She's a big fan of those types of movies. So once she knew that was what I was going for as well, she came onboard.

Keegan-Michael Key is also great in this movie as the voice of Buddy. How did you figure out exactly what the character should sound like?

He came to me with a few approaches and we worked together to dial in the one that felt right. We didn't want it to be too close to Barney, and we didn't want it to be hinting too much. I wanted it to feel like a real show, played very straight, at least for the beginning. He was awesome to work with.

Beyond Barney, you're also clearly taking a lot of inspiration from Pee-wee's Playhouse, especially with how all the objects on the show like the couch and the mailbox come to life.

There's a host of other shows that my kids grew up with that I watched with them. I felt like, if I'm going to do this, I'm not going to do it twice — well, unless I do a sequel — so I might as well burn through every idea I've got about this or just put in everything I can. So there's some of Pee-wee's Playhouse, which is amazing, but also Blue's Clues, Dora the Explorer, a little bit of Ducktails. I went for all from that era that I could.

Are you thinking about making Buddy 2?

I would be interested in that. I very much like the Alien/Aliens approach of shifting genres slightly.

There are a lot of child actors in Buddy, which I've heard can be difficult when making a movie. What was that like?

It was great. I mean, it is a challenge when you have a 12-hour day and the rules for kids are a lot less. But honestly, I wonder if the rules should be less for adults as well.

There were moments where they were scared genuinely by certain things, but we took care of them and we would stop and explain everything. But these kids were very sophisticated. At Sundance, they're outfits — I've never dressed as well as these kids. They're very on point.

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Buddy releases in theaters on Sept. 4, 2026.