Rooster Teeth Is Back!
Online pioneers relaunch with Burnie Burns back at the helm
By Richard Whittaker, 2:18PM, Wed. Feb. 5, 2025
“Under new management.” With those three words, an iconic Austin creative powerhouse is back. Rooster Teeth, the studio that helped pioneer online entertainment, is being revived, almost a year after it went offline. However, that statement also includes a slight lie.
The “new management” in question is actually the original management: Burnie Burns, cofounder, former Chief Creative Officer, and creator of the original series on which the studio was founded, Red vs. Blue. Rooster Teeth will now become part of his company, Box Canyon Productions.
In a statement, Burns wrote, “I am excited at the challenge of bringing Rooster Teeth back to its roots. The heart of this brand has always been its fans, and I look forward to writing a new chapter together.”
Burns even made a trip to Austin Studios, former home of Rooster Teeth, to shoot this announcement video.
Burns originally started Rooster Teeth in his bedroom in 2003. Along with cofounders Matt Hullum, Geoff Ramsey, Jason Saldaña, Gus Sorola, and Joel Heyman, he was creating online video before YouTube was even a thing, and built Rooster Teeth into a global brand, with smash hit animated shows like Gen:LOCK and RWBY, as well as a coterie of podcasts and live streams. Over a series of acquisitions and mergers, it was finally bought by WarnerMedia in 2018.
Unfortunately, unable to stay financially viable in the rapidly-changing world of streaming content, Rooster Teeth shut down in March of 2024.
However, Burns was not part of the company then. He had left Rooster Teeth in 2020 after a two-year process of moving away from the public eye and giving up the reins behind the scenes, and he and wife Ashley Burns relocated their family to Scotland. Now, having purchased the company back from Warners, he's back to rebuild Rooster Teeth.
Yet Burns has made it clear that this won't be exactly the Rooster Teeth it was before, as there will be a new vision for the studio to take it into this new era. Moreover, the rights to several of the studio's most successful shows have gone elsewhere: Dungeons & Dragons-themed series Tales From the Stinky Dragon is now a Patreon-backed success, while RWBY was acquired by anime and manga experts Viz Media last July.
However, that doesn't mean there's a completely blank slate over at Roosterteeth.com. The purchase included all social channels, including the YouTube channel, the RT Podcast, and two of the most beloved series, which are already back online: NSFW kid comedy Camp Camp and, of course, Red vs. Blue. Burnie and Ashley have also moved their own daily podcast, Morning Somewhere, under the RT banner.
Aside from those returns, Burns also promised that there will be fresh content coming. This will include new chapters for beloved RT titles, as well as a new audio series titled Again. Moreover, RT will be getting back into the movie business: Having produced three films (2016 sci-fi comedy Lazer Team, its 2017 sequel Lazer Team 2, and 2018 splatterfest Blood Fest), Rooster Teeth will be getting cinematic again with a remake of Burns' first feature as a director, 1997's The Schedule.
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