The first teaser trailer for Puffins Impossible has landed, revealing our first taste of Johnny Depp‘s return as his arctic animal alter ego, Johnny Puff. Amidst all the scandal surrounding his vitriolic divorce from Amber Heard, the Pirates of the Caribbean isn’t on our screens as much these days, but he does still have at least one franchise under his belt. And that’s Puffins, a TV spinoff of 2019’s kids movie Arctic Dogs.
Following the short-form first season landing last year, the show has now been rebooted as Puffins Impossible, an action-packed follow-up that takes things in an unexpected direction. As the trailer, which you can see above, makes clear, this next batch of episodes will spoof the superhero genre when Depp’s Johnny Puff and his friends encounter a meteor and develop superpowers. Together, Puff, Tactik, Didi Damage, Megapie, and Mystic will embark on adventures that — as per the official synopsis — will include “positive themes of gender and race equality and environmental protection.”
The CG-cartoon, which is the first ever animated series to be made in Serbia, is produced by Andrea Iervolino and Monica Bacardi, through their production companies Iervolino Studios and Archangel Digital Studios. The duo have become firm collaborators of Depp’s in recent years as the former Fantastic Beasts actor has also worked with Iervolino and Bacardi on both Waiting for the Barbarians and Minamata. Puffins veteran Peter Nalli returns as showrunner.
Arctic Dogs — starring Jeremy Renner, James Franco, and John Cleese — was a colossal box office flop when it released in 2019. However, the film ended up finding international success on streaming when it hit Netflix, resulting in it spawning two TV offshoots in Arctic Friends and Puffins. The 18-episode Puffins Impossible becomes available to purchase or rent on the Apple TV app, Amazon Prime Video, and Google Play from April 9.