The Nexus

The Nexus is an American action animated series with military science fiction, space opera, and space western elements, with a serialized episode format. It is created by Morgan Doyle and The Bell brothers, and co-produced by Georgia Lee and Aiyana White in their first animated series project.

The show takes place among the spaceship Nexus, a Class B vessel in the Kingdom of Aria's space fleet.

Premise
Five recruits along with their skilled veteran Captain and just as skilled Commander, take a journey into space for expedition, survival, and whatever fuels their interest into the unknown.

Development
Doyle produced a 2D pilot titled Nexus Station. It was produced in co-operation of Gunpower & Sky, who co-funded and distributed the pilot under their DUST branding.

The pilot received positive reviews and got over six hundred thousand views over the course of three weeks, and as of April 2022, currently has over five million viewers.

With the high praise in mind, Doyle would leave production of Gunblazer's final season to work on developing The Nexus. Before fully going into developing the series, Doyle hired about one hundred CG animators, artists, concept artists, camera animators, and character designers for Axtyon's in house CG studio.

Doyle would bring along The Bell brothers to help co-develop and write the series, and would bring on science fiction television writers to help write the series. Gunpowder & Sky, the pilot co-funder and distributor will act as a co-financier and co-producer on the television series, in return DUST will release The Story Begins on their YouTube channel over the course of September and early October.

Writing
Storyboarding and writing for the initial season took place between January 2021 and September 2021.

Animation
Animation was outsourced to industry leaders in visual effects and animation, such as Cinesite, Axis Studios, and CGCG. Axyton's in house CG studio also worked extensively on the project as well. Oscar-winning VFX supervisor for Avatar and The Jungle Book, Andrew R. Jones, was brought on to help supervise the animation for the first season.

Renewals
Renewals would be costly for the show, as it is one of the most expensive shows that Typewriter has co-funded. To counter this, the show would be subsequently renewed in eleven episode increments, and depending on if the previous season gets enough viewership, then another eleven would get renewed as well.

Broadcasting
For the series, it is simulcast on Vision and Vision Canada at the same hour. Other networks have international rights to the program, such as AnimeCore in Japan, under their Vision Japan block.

For streaming, the show is simulcast on Paramount+ in the United States and around the world, and is usually available on VOD about 5 hours after airing.

Film Series
Sundown Entertainment and Gunpower & Sky approached the production team in the summer of 2022 about the idea of continuing the film series with two sequels in the summers of 2023 and 2024 respectively, with it being a special movie event on the Sundown block, with DUST distributing it on their YouTube and other networks under a two month exclusive streaming cycle. Axtyon accepted, and a secondary writing crew attached to the main writing staff were hired on to write the second film, while the third film would be developed by the main writing staff.