Hulu Buys Animated TV Comedy Pitch ‘Detective Agent Derek’ From Nick Kreiss, Trio Big Grey Mass

EXCLUSIVE: Hulu has snapped up the animated TV comedy pitch Detective Agent Derek from Nick Kreiss, plus Julian Bonosconi, Griffin Poole, and Spencer Rich, a trio of animators, writers, and directors who go by the name Big Grey Mass, sources tell Deadline.

Reps for Hulu declined comment. We’re told Kreiss, Bonosconi, and Poole are the show’s creators and will exec produce alongside Douglas Banker and Conor Welch.

Detective Agent Derek is billed as a prestige cop show filtered through the internet’s weirdest subcultures. Every episode is structured like a serious crime drama — tackling murders, conspiracies, criminal organizations — but the lens is warped: Derek is a nunchuck-wielding, anime-obsessed neckbeard who should never be taken seriously… and yet the world treats him as an alpha savior.

The Big Grey Mass guys pitch themselves as making “animation soup for the soul.” Longtime friends from Orem, Utah — a hyper-religious place with no art scene, animation community, or obvious path into the industry — they didn’t go to film school and came up without a safety net. They describe their process of breaking in as “years of working soul-sucking jobs, figuring it out, and making art anyway.” The trio is repped by Mosaic and Hirsch Wallertstein Hayum.

Kreiss is best known on the feature side for work on Jackass Forever and the comedy Little Bitches, starring Jennette McCurdy, Kiersey Clemons, and Virigina Gardner. In TV, he’s known for Punk’d, The Eric Andre Show and The Prank Panel, as well as Bad Friends at Hulu. He is repped by Underground and Morris Yorn.