The third season of SuperMansion starts on Sony Crackle May 7. Dr. Devizo, voiced by Chris Pine, is declared a hero and he and the Injustice Club are made members of the League of Freedom. “The good guys have to live with the bad guys,” explained Zeb Wells, who created the show with Matthew Senreich.

The animated series has always attracted some biggish names to voice characters, including Bryan Cranston and Keegan-Michael Key. This season sees Minnie Driver join the cast. Driver will voice Debbie Devizo, Dr. Devizo’s ex-wife. “I am thrilled to put on my superhero cape,” Driver said.

“We’re all super-excited about Minnie joining,” Wells added. “She brings a lot of humor and a certain gravitas.”

How does SuperMansion end up attracting boldface names? Well, Cranston is an executive producer of the show, besides voicing Titanium Rex. “They just like what they’ve been reading,” Senreich said of the scripts. “They get excited about playing these characters.”

“And there’s no hair and makeup,” Wells added.

Season three sees the mythology surrounding the League of Freedom get a bit deeper. “You can watch it for the superhero mythology, or you can watch to see some superheroes farting around,” Wells said.

Indeed, SuperMansion remains zany as ever. “I don’t think anyone can predict the way it plays out,” Senreich said. “That’s what makes it so fun.”

And BattleBots starts on Discovery Channel May 11; it pits the most badass robots against each other in battle. Tombstone, Minotaur, Witch Doctor, Bronco and Bite Force are among the battling bots this season.

BattleBots previously aired on Comedy Central, ABC and Discovery sibling Science Channel. Why is it right for Discovery? Wyatt Channell, executive producer, describes the show as a “remarkable mix of things,” including intriguing builders, who drive the bots, and “tremendously kinetic, engaging battles,” he said. “And it’s just a lot of fun.”

Discovery is doing 20 episodes, which were shot in an airplane hangar in Long Beach, Calif., over the course of two weeks. Five days after they premiere on Discovery, episodes run on Science. Channell described the Science episodes as “the same plus more” — repeats, but with additional stuff, such as a bout you didn’t see on Discovery or behind-the-scenes info.

This year’s competition features a mix of horizontal and vertical spinners, and bots with flippers. Of the latter, Channell noted the “hang time of various bots caught on the wrong end of flippers.”

Discovery is doing the BattleBots Twisted Metal Giveaway, where fans of the series have a chance to win a piece of a bot that was presumably smashed to bits in a battle. “A lot of the shrapnel is surprisingly iconic,” Channell said.

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Over the top streaming service Crackle will provide viewers a virtual reality experience featuring its original content, the service announced during its upfront presentation Wednesday morning (April 20).

The Sony Pictures Television-owned Crackle's VR theatre will allow viewers to stream their entire content library – including movies and original programs – in a fully-immersive viewing environment while providing advertisers the opportunity to embed advertiser logos and 360 degree commercials, according to company officials. In addition, Crackle will make available a VR speical of its Bryan Cranston-produced animated series SuperMansion as well as produce extra VR content from its original programming slate that can be advertiser sponsored, the company said. 

“At Crackle, we believe that creating content and ad experiences that mirror changing consumer habits are instrumental for driving viewer attention,” said Eric Berger, Crackle general manager and executive vice president of Sony Pictures Television Digital Networks. “We’re charting a path for television with a sustainable ad model that is a win for the advertiser, the network and most importantly, the consumer.”

On the programming front, Crackle said it has renewed freshman series SuperMansion for a 10-episode second season and has greenlit a 10-episode one-hour drama series based on the popular Guy Ritchie movie Snatch.

Crackle will also air episodes of its Sports Jeopardy! weekly quiz show on NBCSN as part of a deal reached between the company and NBC Sports Group. The multi-year agreement between NBC Sports Group and Crackle will include over 100 existing episodes plus additional episodes of Sports Jeopardy! produced by Crackle.

Also, Crackle’s reality series Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee will feature as guests in its upcoming eighth season actress Margaret Cho, Saturday Night Live creator Lorne Michaels, stand-up comic Jim Gaffigan, Last Week Tonight host John Oliver, actor JB Smoove and writer/producer Judd Apatow.

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Crackle is hoping to break into the big leagues of streaming services with the help of new original series, including the Nov. 19 debut of glitzy drama The Art of More, set in the fictitious realm of New York City art-auction houses and featuring star turns by Dennis Quaid, Cary Elwes and Kate Bosworth.

Over the past five years, the unit of Sony Pictures Television has evolved from offering short-form content, then adding Web series, to now creating long-form TV and films. While The Art of More is the free, ad-supported platform’s first original scripted series, in early October Crackle reached another milestone with the launch of stopmotion animated series SuperMansion, voiced by Emmy Award winner Bryan Cranston.

With 18 million monthly users in the U.S. and availability via 30 different applications for connected TVs, smartphones, tablets and the Web, Crackle has taken pains to ensure its content is pervasive and accessible. To that end, its content also comes in three languages and is available in 21 countries.

‘OTT’ IS TEMPORARY

As executive vice president of digital networks at Sony Pictures Television and general manager of Crackle, Eric Berger has helped develop the division into Sony’s always-on global streaming network. He is responsible for the development, production and distribution of original features and series created for Crackle. He also oversees all programming, marketing, distribution, product, video operations and engineering, as well as ad sales for Crackle and PlayStation Vue.

While it’s tempting to call Crackle another over-the-top provider, Berger eschews the term, calling it “temporary.”

“We view ourselves much more akin to a TV network,” he said. “We’re in the best of both worlds between TV and streaming, and we’re programming with original content. We’ve gone from shortform websites to half-hours, to features and one-hour dramas. We’re growing and evolving.”

Berger said Crackle has aimed for a seamless streaming experience that mirrors programmed linear-TV viewing. When a viewer launches the Crackle app, a scheduled program begins to play, and consumers can browse for something else in the channel guide while continuing to watch the show that’s currently on.

While viewers can always watch something on-demand, Crackle also offers multiple scheduled channels of themed content that vary by daypart.

Berger’s team analyzed consumer behavior with OTT and found that the connected TV category was the most desirable for streaming video into the home.

There were also differences in behavior among users of Roku boxes, Apple TV boxes and game consoles vs. linear TV. The idea of coming home and watching whatever’s on TV is a thing of the past — connected-TV users were simply watching whatever was on, the team found.

This fall, Crackle rolled out the always- on experience on a number of connected devices, including Roku, PlayStation, Xbox, Amazon Fire TV and Android TV.

Consumers started to take notice of Crackle in a big way in 2013 when Comedians in Cars Drinking Coffee, the unscripted interview series produced by and starring Jerry Seinfeld, launched. That was Crackle’s first big crossover show, and it returns in January for a seventh season.

Dan Patrick’s Sports Jeopardy!, a weekly show produced in front of a live studio audience, takes Crackle even further into the pop-culture zeitgeist.

Berger made note of another differentiator for Crackle: Its shows go straight to series; there are no pilots. In addition, Crackle integrates advertisers early on in the process and because it’s backed by Sony, the shows are distributed globally. And by being both the studio and the network, Crackle has an end-to-end process that it sees all the way through from conception with the talent, through distribution. Plus it controls the ad sales.

‘TV AND NOTHING SHORT OF THAT’

Berger calls The Art of More and SuperMansion “TV and nothing short of that.”

“It’s the next evolution for us as we come up from movies and half-hours,” he said. “We want to position Crackle as the best of both worlds — we’re on-demand and we’re a linear network.”

Crackle’s predominantly 18-to-34- year-old male demographic is also evolving and the network is looking more at the psychographics of its streaming audience. “We’re focused on ‘rechargers,’ people who are in the prime of their professional lives, building careers, working hard and playing hard. They stream to relax, they over-index on game-console usage, and they want things that are hassle-free and accessible.”

Bridging the gap between linear TV and on-demand is what Crackle’s aiming for and it’s a sweet spot for Berger.

“I really enjoy the intersection of the art and the technology,” he said. “I like taking the data and learnings about the experiences consumers like to have and translating them into new experiences.”

“We’re introducing audiences to new worlds they haven’t seen before and aligning them thematically with other content that resonates and does well,” Berger added. “By using the data and seeing what works and doesn’t work, we can extrapolate.

“You’re going to see more and more original programming on Crackle,” he added.

OTT video streaming service Crackle and Breaking Bad star Bryan Cranston have teamed to deliver a rambunctious and funny animated series in SuperMansion.

The stop-motion animated series, executively produced by Cranston and Seth Green,  stars Cranston as the voice of Titanium Rex, the leader of The League of Freedom --a group of quirky, inept superheroes who live together and, on occasion, fight crimes.

When a particularly clumsy arrest of a relatively harmless diamond burglar leads to the accidental collapse of the Washington Monument, Rex is hauled in front of Congress, which is intent on defunding the group. When Rex’s plea that the group is needed to fight the evils of the world falls on deaf ears – mostly because his counterparts failed to show up to the hearing – Congress appoints grizzled military accountant Sgt. Agony (Keegan-Michael Key) to go over the heroes’ expenses.

The inquiry leads viewers to find out more about the lives and often ridiculous exploits of the heroes, which includes American Ranger (also voiced by Key), a WW II hero frozen in time who recently re-emerges with very antiquated and offensive views of life; Cooch (Heidi Lynn Gardner), a sassy cat lady; Brad (Tom Root) a steroid-enhanced musclehead; Black Saturn (Tucker Gilmore), a Batman-esque crimefighter with a huge ego, and JewBot (Zeb Wells), a robot dealing with identity issues.

SuperMansion’s tone and language maybe a bit too edgy for young viewers, but creators Zeb Wells and Matthew Senreich (Robot Chicken) also throw in a lot of sophomore humor likely to attract millennial watchers. SuperMansion is a fun, silly takeoff on the superhero culture currently dominating theatrical films and television content today.