General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Electric City

Electric City is a 2012 American animated post-apocalyptic science fiction web series created by, produced by, and starring Tom Hanks, released on Yahoo's video service Yahoo! Screen. It was a co-production of Hanks's company Playtone and the Indian media company Reliance Entertainment, and it served as Yahoo's first original scripted series.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Format	20 animated episodes of roughly four to seven minutes of story³^•⁴
Budget	About $2.5 million for the 90 minutes produced³
Premiere	July 17, 2012 on Yahoo! Screen, with the first ten episodes; the rest followed on July 18 and 19⁵
Lead voice	Tom Hanks as Cleveland Carr, a former police officer charged with maintaining order⁶
Director	Joel Trussell, working with the Los Angeles studio Six Point Harness⁴
Setting	A walled city in a post-apocalyptic world, presented as a symbol of peace and security but marked by secret police, violence, and murder¹
Status	One season; canceled after 2012⁷

Spoilers

Premise and themes

The story is set after the world as we know it has ended. Out of the rubble, the Electric City stands as a symbol of peace and security, but under the veneer of order lies a world of secrets and violence: secret police, back-alley dealings, daring chases, and murder.¹ The series presents a view of the future of civilization through themes including energy consumption, freedom of information, and crime and punishment.⁸

The setting follows a post-apocalyptic logic in which fossil and nuclear fuels are mostly depleted, so communities depend on naturally created electricity from air, water, or muscle power, the last of which is used as a punishment for criminals under the motto "All in service to all."⁹ The plot turns on contraband communication known as Tap Code (alphabet code tapped out knocks, famously used by prisoners) and on Wave Unit Kits, a new technology whose spread drives a revolution that culminates in the finale, "Illumination Night."¹⁰

Hanks said the idea grew out of something he had read about how the former Soviet Union controlled the flow of information to its citizens, and he described the story as being about resistance fighters in a dystopian society where no one, including viewers, is sure whom to trust. He framed the project around making ambiguity attractive, arguing that stories loaded with irony or mixed signals struggle within the traditional Hollywood development system.³

Production

Hanks had been developing the project for years; he first tried to make the series using puppets, and an earlier announcement had slated it for release in early 2011.¹¹ In October 2010, Reliance Big Entertainment, the media and entertainment arm of the Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group, announced a joint venture with Playtone to create Electric City as a multi-platform digital experience covering an animated internet series, an online social game, and a mobile application, with the gaming arm Zapak managing the project.¹² That November, the Los Angeles animation studio Six Point Harness was announced as the design and production partner.¹³

Yahoo picked up the series as its first original scripted series, announced at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January 2012.² Playtone partner Gary Goetzman described the web as a way to reach audiences wherever they are with an experimental story.⁶ Director Joel Trussell, an animator known for music videos and commercials who joined Six Point Harness in 2009, was pitched by the studio after creating spec images from a short Playtone script.⁴

Release and interactive features

The series premiered on July 17, 2012, with ten episodes of about five to seven minutes, followed by the remaining episodes on July 18 and 19.⁵ Yahoo positioned the launch as a 360-degree interaction of digital, social, mobile, and gaming media, with a 3-D map of the city, behind-the-scenes footage, games, and apps on iOS and Android.¹^•⁵ Viewers could comment on characters and plot lines on Facebook and Twitter and ask questions of Hanks.⁶ The story was written as a complete arc in three acts of six or seven episodes each, without artificial cliffhangers, so Yahoo could release it act by act.¹⁴

A companion mobile game, Electric City: The Revolt, a 99-cent role-playing game developed by Jump Games for iOS and Android, launched alongside the free viewing app on July 17, 2012.¹⁵ Critics received the game poorly; its Metacritic metascore was 39, with reviewers calling the gameplay nearly unplayable despite an interesting storyline.¹⁶

Cast

Tom Hanks voices Cleveland Carr. The cast also includes Jeanne Tripplehorn, Holland Taylor, Ginnifer Goodwin, Jason Antoon, Chris Parnell, Paul Scheer, June Diane Raphael, and Georg Stanford Brown.¹ Paul Scheer voices Walter LaFong and Jason Antoon voices Garrison "Knobs" Butler.⁷ Common Sense Media rated the series 16 and up, citing mature themes including political revolution, torture, totalitarianism, and sudden graphic violence.¹⁷

Reception and availability

The series holds a 6.6/10 rating on IMDb from several hundred users.⁸ It won one award and received one nomination, according to IMDb.⁸ After one season it was canceled.⁷

Its host platform did not last much longer as a destination. Yahoo Screen, launched in 2013 as the home for Yahoo's original content, was shut down in January 2016 after Yahoo took a $42 million write-down on its original series, with content scattered across the company's other sites.¹⁸ As of recent listings, the compiled series runs about 77 to 80 minutes and is available in only a few markets, such as Spain and South Korea.¹⁹

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Series and fictional screen worlds › Unscripted, reality, and web-native series › Web-native and streaming-original series › Genre web series: horror, thriller, science fiction, and mystery

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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