Looking for a spooky watch this Halloween season? Netflix’s new show, “Haunted Hotel,” delivers innovative adult animation that blends horror tropes with strong storytelling and comedy. Released on Sept. 19, “Haunted Hotel” brings together a prolific creative team — including creator Matt Roller and executive producer Chris McKenna ’92.

“Haunted Hotel” follows a single mother of two, Katherine, who struggles to run a haunted hotel filled with ghosts, demons and other monsters. She manages with the aid of her brother (who happens to be one of the ghosts), all while helping her two sons navigate their adolescent struggles. 

“[The idea] came very simply from loving horror and watching all the horror movies, reading all the horror comics [and] playing all the horror games,” Roller said.

Roller, who previously wrote for “Rick and Morty,” “Community” and “Archer,” saw “Haunted Hotel” as an opportunity to play with many horror tropes found across media — which is why the show incorporates over 80 easter eggs and nods to classic horror films like “The Shining” (1980) and “Friday the 13th” (1980).  

“When I was on ‘Rick and Morty’ and we were telling all these stories based on sci-fi tropes, I wanted to do stories about horror tropes,” Roller said. “So I started thinking about how I would build an animated show that would allow me to play in any horror genre that I wanted, because I wanted to tell stories with ghosts, but also with possession and cults and monsters.”

Roller drafted the pilot eight years ago, but production didn’t begin until June 2023, when Netflix picked it up. 

“[Netflix] was really incredible in terms of allowing Matt to see his vision through,” McKenna said. Having written for Marvel’s Spiderman movies and shows such as “American Dad,” McKenna met Roller while working on “Community.” He helped his vision for “Haunted Hotel” come to life throughout the past two years. The duo focused strongly on having each episode tell a complete story.

“That’s what Roller was really aiming to do with ‘Haunted Hotel,’” McKenna said, adding that it wasn’t just about the concept or world, but “really great character-driven stories.” With both Roller and McKenna having previously worked on sitcoms and animated shows, Roller and McKenna felt “Haunted Hotel” was a fresh take on the medium — not only introducing horror elements but also stepping away from ironic comedy.

“I think the show is earnest,” Roller said, noting “Haunted House” makes an effort to incorporate the raw emotion of its characters’ circumstances into its humor, rather than dismissing it entirely. “Even though that’s maybe the oldest approach to it, for some reason right now, it also feels fresh. It feels like the version without irony is the version that people have not been doing for a while.”

Since 2023, the show has been working “full speed ahead,” as Roller put it, before wrapping the last episode in mid-July. “In animation, the reason it takes so long is you’re drawing it frame by frame,” said Roller. “You can change it in a way you can’t in live action. So it’s just this incredible level of micro detail that you apply to every step of the process.” 

Despite their extensive experience in media, neither McKenna nor Roller jumped right into the entertainment scene. At Stanford, McKenna was initially on the pre-med track. “I found myself — instead of doing any of the pre-med classes — blowing them off and going to movies all the time,” McKenna said. “I was just not putting the work in, and at that point, I decided, ‘I’m just going to take a quarter where I take classes I like.’”

So he switched to communication and history, also taking courses in film and video production. In his senior year, he created a horror comedy movie called “It Came from SLAC,”  a reference to the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) National Accelerator Laboratory on campus.

Similar to McKenna, Roller graduated from Harvard in 2008 with plans to attend law school. After two weeks of being a consultant, he decided to switch paths. “The thing I’d liked about all my college activities was the creative and comedic side of them, so with no real clear path forward to become a creative writer, I just started doing it on my own.” 

“It was really great to see that what Roller and the writers, and what all of us, were trying to do was just tell really great stories within this [show’s] concept,” McKenna said. “I just think it’s a fun show … I think there’s a lot of comedy to it.”

The show currently sits at 75% on Rotten Tomatoes, with critics voicing appreciation for how thoroughly the show develops its original universe. “So much lore — world building, as I guess we’d call it — gets crammed into the show,” said Glen Weldon, cultural critic and host of NPR’s podcast “Pop Culture Happy Hour.” “There’s a lot of moving parts, but I really felt they all fit together well.”

McKenna and Roller’s journeys into the entertainment world weren’t linear — yet here they are now, playing major roles in the modern media industry. “It’s been a long road since that initial idea [for Haunted Hotel],” Roller said.