Adult Swim fires 'Rick and Morty' co-creator and star Justin Roiland over domestic violence charges; show will go on
A little more than a week after Justin Roiland, the co-creator, executive producer and star of Rick and Morty, appeared at a pre-trial hearing to face domestic violence charges, Adult Swim says it's no longer working with him.
"Adult Swim has ended its association with Justin Roiland," a rep for the network tells Yahoo Entertainment.
She added that the animated hit would continue, and the show's official Twitter account said the same.
— Rick and Morty (@RickandMorty) January 24, 2023
Yahoo Entertainment has reached out to Roiland's lawyer for comment.
When news of the case broke, his attorney T. Edward Welbourn told Yahoo Entertainment: "It is hard to overstate how inaccurate the recent media coverage of this situation has been. To be clear, not only is Justin innocent but we also have every expectation that this matter is on course to be dismissed once the district attorney's office has completed its methodical review of the evidence. We look forward to clearing Justin’s name and helping him move forward as swiftly as possible."
NBC News reported Jan. 12 that Roiland had been charged in May 2020 for an incident that occurred in January of that year in Orange County, Calif., involving an anonymous woman who Roiland was dating at the time. He later pleaded not guilty to one felony count of domestic battery with corporal injury and one felony count of false imprisonment by menace, violence, fraud and/or deceit.
A protective order filed in October 2020 prohibited Roiland from harassing, threatening, surveilling or going within 100 feet of an unnamed person.
Plans for re-casting the show, which was co-created by Community mastermind Dan Harmon, are unknown; Roiland voiced both title characters. Rick and Morty had been granted an extraordinarily large renewal deal back in 2018 for 70 more episodes, and fewer than half of those have aired.