Mike Wazowski, Boo and Sulley are ready for their ‘Monday Night Football’ closeup.
ESPN revealed during halftime of the Week 8 ‘MNF’ contest between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Washington Commanders that the 2025 ‘Funday Football’ featuring ‘Monsters, Inc.’ will be Dec. 8 when the Philadelphia Eagles and Los Angeles Chargers face off.
The animated alt-cast, which places viewers in the Monsters Inc. world with characters serving as avatars for the on-screen action, will be available on ESPN2, Disney+ or the Disney Channel (or the ESPN app), while the normal telecast will air on ESPN and ABC. The ‘Cheer Floor’ will replace the famous ‘Scare Floor’ popularized by the movie series.
Sony’s Beyond Sports and Hawk-Eye are the technological powers that make it all possible. In 2023, the idea of an animated alt-cast debuted with ‘Toy Story’ and ‘The Simpsons.’ Paramount has also experimented with the format and aired a ‘SpongeBob’ alt-cast during Super Bowl 58, for example.
As for the ‘Monsters, Inc.’ cast, Mike will be pulling for the Eagles – the green makes sense – and Sulley will be cheering for the Chargers, as they seek to fill ‘cheer’ cannisters, which replace the ‘scream’ cannisters from the movies.
Drew Carter and Dan Orlovsky will be on the call thanks to special virtual-reality headsets. Billy Crystal (Wazowski), John Goodman (Sulley) and Bob Peterson (Roz) all return to voice their original characters through prerecorded lines.
