{"id":29530,"date":"2025-04-25T08:50:46","date_gmt":"2025-04-25T12:50:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/worldscreen.com\/"},"modified":"2025-04-29T10:07:00","modified_gmt":"2025-04-29T14:07:00","slug":"ryan-gillis-sunil-hall-discuss-the-creation-of-disneys-stugo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/ryan-gillis-sunil-hall-discuss-the-creation-of-disneys-stugo\/","title":{"rendered":"Ryan Gillis & Sunil Hall Discuss the Creation of Disney\u2019s\u00a0StuGo"},"content":{"rendered":"

Back in 2018, Ryan Gillis inked an overall deal with Disney Television Animation, leading to years of hard work and creative brainstorming that paid off earlier this year with the debut of StuGo<\/em>\u00a0on Disney Channel. The animated series follows six middle schoolers who are tricked into attending a fake academic summer camp run by a mad scientist. They end up on a Caribbean-inspired tropical island filled with fighting fungi, mind-reading manatees and plenty of other dangerous, fantastical creatures.<\/p>\n

The show is loosely inspired by Gillis\u2019 childhood growing up in southern Florida, where he spent an extensive amount of time outside. \u201cNature is so present in the Caribbean and the tropics,\u201d he explains. \u201cYou can\u2019t think of yourself as separate from it. It\u2019s crawling in your house, it\u2019s eating the walls. There are animals in the bathroom. I grew up very aware [of nature].\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMy brother was a biologist, and he used to love catching stuff,\u201d he continues. \u201cI\u2019d go out and I wouldn\u2019t help him, but I\u2019d take photos. He would do the hard work, and I would then show photos of him holding [animals] and be like, I was there! I grew up in a space where I was thinking about animals all the time. I love animals, and this show is a wonderful vehicle for strange stories.\u201d<\/p>\n

When it came time to pitch something to Disney, \u201cI had notebooks full of stuff,\u201d Gillis says. \u201cI assembled them into a giant Florida pile and filtered them through this experience that happened to me where I went on a study abroad gone wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n

Disney signed on for the concept and brought Titmouse on board to produce. Titmouse was a serendipitous choice as a partner for the series, as Gillis had previously spent time as an animator at the studio a decade prior.<\/p>\n

Titmouse\u2019s Sunil Hall came on as a co-executive producer, bringing his extensive experience in the animation industry to the production. \u201cI was the showrunner on\u00a0The Mighty Ones<\/em>\u00a0for DreamWorks, and\u00a0StuGo<\/em>\u00a0has a similar pipeline and animation style,\u201d Hall says. \u201cWe were actually able to bring over a lot of the artists who worked on\u00a0The Mighty Ones<\/em>. It was really great for me to bring all that experience and knowledge from the previous show and apply it to this one. It was kind of a leg up when we got started, and we were able to get some really amazing work out of the team.\u201d<\/p>\n

And though Gillis has over a decade of experience in the industry himself, he acknowledges the massive benefits Hall brought. \u201cI would say the majority of the experience [brought] to the show was Sunil\u2019s,\u201d he comments. \u201cEveryone says season ones are difficult, but he was able to jump over a lot of rough patches.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to the experience of the creatives behind the scenes, the talent of the voice cast helped the show shine as well. From Zosia Mamet, Gabourey Sidibe and Lorraine Toussaint to Tania Gunadi, Zach Reino and Charlyne Yi, there was a wealth of talent involved. \u201cThey\u2019re all just so funny,\u201d Gillis says. \u201cThey all get the jokes. We asked them to riff, and every single one of them makes me laugh out loud. They get exactly what we\u2019re trying to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

The hope is that children will see themselves in the six characters, who are all at an age of discovery. \u201cThey\u2019re all preteens and doing a lot of growing, as real kids are at that age, too,\u201d Hall says. \u201cI hope a lot of kids can relate to that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Plus, \u201cthey\u2019re very high-performing back in school, but they\u2019re thrust into this unfamiliar environment, and they\u2019re forced to use their skills to cope in different ways and discover new things about themselves,\u201d Hall continues. And their adventures show kids that \u201cfailure is OK. You can learn from it. It can be a positive thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like Gillis, many of the creatives behind the scenes \u201clove animals and nature, and a lot of the characters love animals and nature,\u201d the creator says. \u201cEven though it\u2019s sci-fi and we\u2019re embellishing, [it\u2019s about] thinking about how animals work, how the ecosystem works. So, maybe [the show will] spark a little curiosity, too.\u201d<\/p>\n

StuGo<\/em>\u00a0reflects what happens when a creative is given the chance to fully round out and shape their idea. On earning that chance for himself and signing the overall deal with Disney Television Animation all those years ago, Gillis says, \u201cThat was one of the luckiest positions in my whole life. It\u2019s very rare that you get to focus on an idea for that amount of time, and in the meanwhile, I got to work on shows like\u00a0The Wonderful World of Mickey Mouse<\/em>\u00a0and meet all those creators.\u201d<\/p>\n

He adds, \u201cAnd my development exec, Elizabeth Waybright Taylor, was such a good shepherd for this thing, and it takes a long time. She just loved the idea, and she took care of it for years. I couldn\u2019t have asked for a better development process.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Co-creator and executive producer Ryan Gillis and co-executive producer Sunil Hall discuss StuGo.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1412,"featured_media":29531,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[79,21],"tags":[10373,7879,10374],"class_list":["post-29530","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-features","category-top-stories","tag-ryan-gillis","tag-stugo","tag-sunil-hall","pmpro-has-access"],"yoast_head":"\nRyan Gillis & Sunil Hall Discuss the Creation of Disney\u2019s\u00a0StuGo - TVKIDS<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/ryan-gillis-sunil-hall-discuss-the-creation-of-disneys-stugo\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Ryan Gillis & Sunil Hall Discuss the Creation of Disney\u2019s\u00a0StuGo - TVKIDS\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Co-creator and executive producer Ryan Gillis and co-executive producer Sunil Hall discuss StuGo.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/ryan-gillis-sunil-hall-discuss-the-creation-of-disneys-stugo\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"TVKIDS\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2025-04-25T12:50:46+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2025-04-29T14:07:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2025\/04\/Disney-StuGo-0425.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"640\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"394\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Jamie Stalcup\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Jamie Stalcup\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/ryan-gillis-sunil-hall-discuss-the-creation-of-disneys-stugo\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/ryan-gillis-sunil-hall-discuss-the-creation-of-disneys-stugo\/\",\"name\":\"Ryan Gillis & Sunil Hall Discuss the Creation of Disney\u2019s\u00a0StuGo - TVKIDS\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2025-04-25T12:50:46+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2025-04-29T14:07:00+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/#\/schema\/person\/0da12602224807cc7b179b8405018deb\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/ryan-gillis-sunil-hall-discuss-the-creation-of-disneys-stugo\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/ryan-gillis-sunil-hall-discuss-the-creation-of-disneys-stugo\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/ryan-gillis-sunil-hall-discuss-the-creation-of-disneys-stugo\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Ryan Gillis & Sunil Hall Discuss the Creation of Disney\u2019s\u00a0StuGo\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/\",\"name\":\"TVKIDS\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/#\/schema\/person\/0da12602224807cc7b179b8405018deb\",\"name\":\"Jamie Stalcup\",\"description\":\"Jamie Stalcup is the executive editor of World Screen. 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