The Venture Bros. is an American adult animated action comedy television series created by Chris McCulloch (also known as "Jackson Publick") and Doc Hammer for Cartoon Network's late night programming block Adult Swim. Following a pilot episode on February 16, 2003, the series premiered on August 7, 2004. The Venture Bros. was one of Adult Swim's longest-running original series in terms of years, and had the record for fewest seasons produced of a scripted show per year of continuous production, with seven produced seasons over fifteen years of production. Throughout its run, the series has received critical acclaim for its writing, characters, humor, animation, and world building. It ended its run on October 7, 2018, with a total of 81 episodes over the course of 7 seasons, as well as 4 specials. On September 7, 2020, series creator Jackson Publick announced on Twitter that the series had been canceled. On May 12, 2021, it was announced a direct-to-video film is currently in production and will premiere on Adult Swim and HBO Max. The film will act as a finale to the series. Plot The series chronicles the lives and adventures of the Venture family: emotionally insecure, unethical and underachieving super-scientist father Dr. Thaddeus "Rusty" Venture; his well-meaning but incompetent teenage fraternal twin sons Hank and Dean Venture; the family's bodyguard, secret agent Brock Samson, or his temporary replacement, the reformed villain and pederast Sergeant Hatred; and the family's self-proclaimed archnemesis, The Monarch, a butterfly-themed supervillain. Initially conceived as a satire of boy adventurer and Space Age fiction prevalent in the early 1960s, it is considered to be an action/adventure series with both comedic and dramatic elements. Development Show creator McCulloch was one of the main writers for the Saturday morning animated series The Tick. He created The Venture Bros. storyline sometime prior to 2000. After working for the television program Sheep in the Big City and the live-action version of The Tick, McCulloch set to turning The Venture Bros. into an animated series. The Venture Bros. was originally conceived as a comic book story for an issue of Monkeysuit. McCulloch realized that his notes were too extensive for a short comics story and proposed that Comedy Central air The Venture Bros. as an animated series, but the network rejected it. Although the first draft of the pilot script was written in the spring of 2000, the premise was not greenlit