Buddy: Too Many Cooks Creator Delivers His Horror Take on Barney

It takes a lot to make a stew, or so we were taught by the 2014 viral sensation “Too Many Cooks.” The Adult Swim short took viewers through a genre-bending walk through television history, beginning with the title credits of a TGIF sitcom like Full House, transitioning to a gritty cop show or a ’90s sci-fi program, with plenty of slasher horror in between. With the release of Buddy this August, “Too Many Cooks” creator Casper Kelly hopes to show it doesn’t take much to make a horror movie—it just takes adding a sinister layer to something made for kids.

The first teaser for Buddy mostly consists of grainy footage of a ’90s children’s program, in which the orange unicorn Buddy beckons the viewer closer while kids frolic in the playground behind him. A cheery theme song plays in the background, though occasionally distorted or interrupted by sharp tones, accompanied by images of frightened and mangled kids. A single shot of a concerned woman played by The Penguin‘s Cristin Milioti gives us our one look at the movie’s protagonist Grace, a suburbanite who investigates the truth of Buddy‘s world.

Co-written by Kelly and Jamie King, Buddy co-stars Topher Grace as Grace’s husband, alongside the exact people you’d expect to appear in a horror take on Barney. Keegan-Michael Key voices the central figure, while Patton Oswalt voices a backpack called Strappy, Clint Howard plays the crazy cowboy puppet George, and Michael Shannon does double duty as the voice of a train and a ventriloquist’s dummy.

All of that casting makes sense, as does Kelly’s involvement. Half of the fun of “Too Many Cooks” was, of course, the level of detail that Kelly brought to the material. The other half, of course, was the way he made those elements turn surreal and terrifying. It wasn’t just that a serial killer appeared alongside the ever-expanding cast of the fictional sitcom. It’s that the line between reality and fiction blurred as the characters ran through backlots to hide from the killer, their glowing title credits giving them away.

If Kelly can bring that same approach to Buddy, then he’ll be able to find sublime terror in a kid’s show, while still attending to the details of that show. However, a bigger question remains: can he do that in a way that’s unique and engaging?

Five Nights at Freddy’s came out the same year as “Too Many Cooks,” and has expanded into a multimedia franchise. The 2018 short “The Hug” did it’s own take, while Warner Bros. released The Banana Splits Movie in 2019, another killer kid’s show movie, this time with officially-licensed characters from that show. Even the Terrifier franchise got in on the act, with an extended kid’s program sequence in the second movie. As of this writing, Daniel Kaluuya and Ayo Edebiri are making an official Barney movie for A24, which may have horror elements, or may be a more dramatic take on the material, like 2017’s Brigsby Bear.

With so many similar works already out there, can Buddy stand out? After all, too many cooks can spoil the broth.

Buddy releases in theaters on August 28, 2026.