Mythic Quest Creators Discuss F. Murray Abraham’s Exit, the Chances of a Movie or Game

The finale of Mythic Quest’s third season has arrived and it brings to an end another string of episodes that now chronicle the lives of employees working at not just one, but two fictional game studios dealing with the highs and lows of the video game industry in the most comedic ways possible.

Last year during a pause in the filming of the Season 3 finale, IGN and other press outlets spoke with Mythic Quest’s cast and creators about the rise of GrimPop, the fallout of the departure of F. Murray Abraham’s C.W. Longbottom, the possibility of Mythic Quest being made into an actual game or movie, and more.

Two Studios and a Movie… and a Game?!

At the end of Mythic Quest’s second season, Rob McElhenney’s Ian and Charlotte Nicdao’s Poppy chose to resign from the studio and start their own company called GrimPop Studios that would develop Poppy’s game, Hera. This led to an interesting new challenge on set as the team had to now split time between two different studios. Luckily, it turned out to be a joy for the team to tackle.

“We had a lot of fun in GrimPop because it’s a really new environment for us, and so we really got our fun out of that set,” Mythic Quest co-creator and executive producer Megan Ganz said. “But, we found ways to cross people over. So, you know, as David says, he’s just not allowed to have Mythic Quest to himself. Our characters are all very meddlesome and so they’ve found their ways into getting into each other’s business, which has provided, I think, some really fun crossovers.

“In the same way that it’s like with an ensemble comedy, it’s really fun to mix up pairings. It was also really fun to see people invade each other’s spaces, which was new. Also seeing David in his new big office was always really great.”

One of these crossovers involved Ian himself as he was very interested in the development of the movie adaptation of Mythic Quest. This gave McElhenney’s character a reason to keep popping up on the set as he was “very interested in how that was going to go and his legacy and how that was going to be represented.” 

Speaking of movies, Ganz teased that she and the team wouldn’t be opposed to the show Mythic Quest actually becoming a movie, and she used Community’s “six seasons and a movie” line to drive that point home.

“We are open to the idea that the show will also be made into a movie,” Ganz said. “Just putting that out there. Three seasons and a movie, If you need any reference.” 

A movie wasn’t the only thing being put out there in this set visit chat, as the team also discussed the odds of Mythic Quest becoming an actual game in the real world.

“That’d be something we’d need to ask our partners at Ubisoft,” McElhenney said. “I think we suggested that the game itself is AAA. So to build something like this would cost approximately a lot of money. So, it turns out that the studio that distributes our show has a lot of money. I wonder if there’s…”

“Anything that could be done,” Ashly Burch, the actor behind Rachel, interjected.

“Interesting. I don’t know. Just putting it out there,” McElhenney said.

The Longbottom In the Room

While many were excited about the return of Mythic Quest for a third season, they were just as shocked to find out that F. Murray Abraham and his character C.W. Longbottom would not be part of the show any longer.

The exact details of Abraham’s departure have never been confirmed, but the creators of Mythic Quest chose not to shy away from it in the show. 

“Yeah, it’s a bummer to not have Murray in this season,” McElhenney said. “But we recognize that C.W. is a beloved character and obviously a huge part of the show, so we made sure that we have a really fitting tribute to him. And I don’t wanna give anything away. We definitely address it in a big way.”

While we won’t spoil here how Mythic Quest handles C.W. Longbottom’s story, Ganz and David Hornsby, the actor playing David Brittlesbee and an executive producer on the series, talked about the thought process in dealing with him exiting Mythic Quest and if there was ever a possibility of recasting the character.

“You know, we did talk about [recasting C.W. Longbottom], but in the end, we decided that it’s just going to shine a light on how he’s not there,” Ganz said. “It’s sort of like you have this cast and they’re so magical together and we didn’t want to add anybody into it in Season 3. We were delighted to have Naomi in more of the episodes this year because she had already been a part of the show.”

“It wasn’t organic in a way to try to plug in Anthony Hopkins or, you know, like swapping [someone] out,” Hornsby added. “Like, it was organic from the creation. And then it felt like, well, it feels organic to bring Naomi as a character to life even more and give her more story because she’s great.”

“Yeah, which we were planning on doing anyway,” Ganz revealed. “And we just decided to instead just deal with that character and that story in a meaningful way without feeling like we had to bring somebody in as a substitute.”

Mythic Quest Meets the Real World of Video Games

Just because Mythic Quest takes place in a fictional world, it doesn’t mean that the team behind the show can’t fit in real world happenings to make it feel relevant. After all, it had a whole special about the team trying to handle working from home after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

That thought process extends into the world of games, and Mythic Quest continuously chooses to embrace some of the biggest headlines and see if they can work in the framework of the series.

2022 was a big year for such headlines, as it saw the controversial NFTs attempt to take over the spotlight, mega-ton acquisitions like Microsoft’s $68.7 billion deal to purchase Activision Blizzard emerged, and much more. In fact, Ubisoft itself is very involved in keeping the team up-to-speed with the goings-on in the video game industry, and Ganz couldn’t be more appreciative.

“It’s just awesome because we’re just like, we can use that, we can use that, and we can use that. It’s like a grab bag of things that we just get to pull from to make stories about,” Ganz said. “And there’s always stuff happening. I always feel like there’s some crossover between Hollywood and the gaming industry in that way too. So it’s not like the stories are completely foreign to us, which is nice. 

“We definitely touch on a lot of those things because we’d like to make it feel like it’s happening in the same contemporary world as everything else, which is the reason why last season, we were supposed to start our season with an E3 event and then we decided to not do that because that didn’t happen and we wanted to represent the gaming world as it is.”

There are so many more connections to the real world of video games on the Mythic Quest team, as Burch is a prolific voice actor who stars, amongst other roles, as Aloy in Horizon Zero Dawn and Horizon Forbidden West.

To end our chat, it was revealed that Danny Pudi, the actor behind Brad Bakshi, played through the entirety of Horizon Zero Dawn and had no idea Burch starred as the protagonist. 

“There was this moment on set where he brought up he was playing Horizon Zero Dawn and I was like, ‘You know, Ashly does the voice of that?’ And he was like, what? I was like, ‘Yeah, you haven’t noticed?’” Ganz said.

Burch then added with a laugh, “And Mike Berlucchi, who is our DP, who is also a big fan, was like, ‘Danny…’ He was mad at him. How did you not know? What a terrible friend.”

For more, check out our review of Mythic Quest’s third season and all the details about the spin-off series Mere Mortals that will “explore the lives of employees, players, and fans who are impacted by the game.”

Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.

Amelia Emberwing contributed to this report and is the entertainment Streaming Editor here at IGN. She’s also a film and television critic who spends too much time talking about dinosaurs, superheroes, and folk horror. You can usually find her with her dog, Rogers. There may be cheeseburgers involved. Follow her across social @ThatWitchMia