Riley Voelkel and Shiva Negar Join Adult Animated Comedy Above Average
Riley Voelkel and Shiva Negar will each voice a role in Above Average, an adult animated comedy. Deadline broke the casting news on 27 October 2026 as an exclusive.
The show is in late-stage development, the point where a project is well along in planning but is still being put together. Deadline reports that it is being developed as an eight-part series, which sets the planned length at eight episodes.
The series comes from creators Andrew Deutsch and Cailin Walker-Bent at Red Pants Productions, with Josh Harris at JVH Media. Deutsch and Walker-Bent will write and direct the show. They will also oversee voice direction and casting, which is the work of finding the actors who speak the characters' lines and then directing those recordings.
That explains why the cast is being announced one name at a time. Voice work for animation is often recorded in short sessions, with actors reading lines in a studio while the animators build the picture around them later.
The story centres on Gadget Kid, an ordinary teenager with no superpowers. Gadget Kid turns to SALT, a trio of washed-up middle-aged superheroes who operate out of a dilapidated laundromat. Their accountant is part of the group too.
The premise is a comic one. A regular kid, a team past its prime and a laundromat base give the show a simple hook. Voelkel and Negar are the first cast members named so far.
