“Phineas & Ferb” Creators Credit Disney+ Success For New Series
Last year, Disney announced it was reviving the classic animated series, “Phineas and Ferb”, for 40 all-new episodes for Disney Channel and Disney+, with the show’s original creators, Dan Povenmire and Jeff “Swampy” Marsh, returning to executive produce and voice-direct the all-new episodes.
The series follows the adventures of Phineas Flynn and his English stepbrother, Ferb Fletcher, on their summer vacation. Each day, the boys and their friends take on some ambitious new project, sometimes to help someone in need, but often just to create something fun. This annoys the boys’ sister, Candace, who constantly attempts to get them in trouble by revealing their actions to Mom. Meanwhile, across town, the wannabe-evil scientist Dr. Doofenshmirtz continually attempts to take over the Tri-State area with his various inator devices, and Perry the Platypus, the boys’ pet and a secret agent, consistently foils his plans on behalf of the O.W.C.A and his commanding officer, Major Mongram. At the end of each episode, the two plots intersect to erase all traces of the boys’ project just before Candace can successfully show it to Mom.
While the Screen Actor’s Guild and Writer’s Guild Of America union strikes have caused lots of disruption to the creation of many shows and films, since most of Disney’s animated shows’ creators, cast, and crew belong to different working unions, which aren’t on strike, work has been allowed to continue on making the new “Phineas & Ferb” series.
Recently, at the New York Comic-Con, the show’s creators, Dan Povenmire and Jeff “Swampy” Marsh, spoke with The Pop Insider, where they were asked about when the new series would arrive on Disney+ and the Disney Channel. Dan Povenmire replied:
“It’ll probably be the following summer. It’s basically the same show as before, we’ve got a lot of the same staff,”
With Swampy adding:
“We realized we hadn’t run out of ideas yet”
Disney hasn’t officially announced when the new “Phineas & Ferb” series will arrive on Disney+, but it does look like the team still have a while to work on new episodes, before the show arrives in the summer of 2024, as long as everything goes according to plan.
The pair were also asked about how the revival came about, with Marsh saying:
“Somebody called and said, ‘Want to make more?’ and we’re like yeah. We’ve always said ‘Yeah sure, we’ll do that,’”
And Dan Povenmire shared a little more detail on why the show’s success on Disney+ helped bring the show back for another go:
“I think it came about because the show’s been in the top five on Disney+ since they started,” he said. “I think with the pandemic, a lot of people went back to that for a comfort show and I think that really pushed the numbers up and they were like, ‘We should do more of this show.’”
One of the many advantages for Disney with its streaming services, is that it offers important data about what shows people are watching and the high viewing numbers for “Phineas & Ferb”, even though it has been over ten years since the last season was released, highlighted to Disney that there is an audience for more adventures over the summer.
The show ran for 129 episodes across four seasons, with lots of additional films and specials, all of which are available to stream on Disney+.
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