Netflix Reveals First Footage of Cuphead Animated Show, Starring King Dice

Netflix finally showed off its long-in-development Cuphead animated series during its Netflix Geeked Week event, one of the many E3-adjacent shows running ahead of or alongside the gaming event this weekend. The event today mostly centered on adaptations of gaming properties, or properties that have also been adapted to games, as is the case with The Witcher.

The reveal came with a surprise appearance by actor Wayne Brady, who revealed he’s playing King Dice in the show. We got to see a short clip of the show, specifically of King Dice hosting some kind of a radio show — possibly some kind of gamble that would get the hapless participant in debt with the devil. Dice takes even more inspiration from Cab Calloway on the show than he did in the game, scatting and dancing his way to the mic.

We didn’t see either the titular Cuphead or his brother Mugman, but the fact that King Dice is not black-and-blue would seem to indicate it takes place before the game (or at least long enough after that he’s not still smarting from the beating I absolutely didn’t give him because I suck at Cuphead). We did see shopkeeper Porkrind listening to the show on his radio.

In addition to the Cuphead footage, we got some updates on Netflix’s other gaming franchises. We got a very frenetic teaser trailer for the upcoming Season 2 of The Witcher, which mostly showed Ciri. The creators of the Castlevania animated show confirmed a new series, starring game characters Richter Belmont and Maria Renard, is also in development. Stranger Things characters are also coming to Smite, for some reason. We also got two seconds of a Splinter Cell anime, which is only disappointing for A) being two seconds long, and B) not being the game for which many of us were hoping.