Warner Bros Next Movie Star: Bugs Bunny
EXCLUSIVE: Warner Bros has hired Elf scribe David Berenbaum to write Bugs Bunny, a live action/CG feature film designed to revive one of the studio’s most iconic intellectual properties. I’m told that Berenbaum, who also adapted The Spiderwick Chronicles and is writing an animated project with George Lucas–just closed his deal. No producer has yet been assigned. While Warner Bros has struggled to pick winners out of its DC Comics catalog beyond Batman, the studio has done little with its Looney Tunes catalog lately. Warner Bros scored with the 1996 film Space Jam, mingling Looney Tunes characters with NBA superstars led by Michael Jordan, but its feature momentum ground to a halt with the 2003 Brendan Fraser-starrer Looney Tunes: Back In Action.
Warner Bros has become active on the short film front. It has made a trilogy of 3D films so far. The first played before the recently released Cats & Dogs 2, the second will precede Zack Snyder’s Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole, and the third will play in front of Yogi Bear.
While the rabbit was toned down in later Looney Tunes incarnations, the 1940 Tex Avery creation was the centerpiece for smart, topical, sophisticated and sometimes subversive cartoon shorts, marked by the vocal versatility of Mel Blanc, who also voiced Elmer Fudd, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig and others. Berenbaum’s repped by WME.
If this is true which it seems to be, based on the recent restart of the Looney Tunes shorts, there’s one producer who comes to mind that should be involved with this film – Allison Abbate. She was producer on LTBIA and did everything she could to save it and Warners knew that, which is why they brought her back to be involved with the new shorts. She’s got great producing sensibilities and can work with the best – she’s been with Tim Burton on his animated films going back to Nightmare Before Christmas and produced last years AMAZING Fantastic Mr. Fox.
Bring back Bugs the right way this time around for a whole new generation to enjoy! “Don’t take life too seriously. You’ll never get out alive.” – Bugs
I hope that Bugs will be like Neal McDonough and stay pure in this new adventure. Unfortunately, he is a rabbit.
Sorry…the first hire for an animated feature film should NOT be a live action screenwriter. This is obvious to everyone on the frigging planet EXCEPT the hair/hare-brained suits at Warner Bros. As any six-year old who has watched a Bugs Bunny cartoon can tell you, the first hires should be an experienced and talented animation director/producer, along with gag artists, gag writers, animators and designers. Later on, if you want to punch up the script, hire some funny writers who know what works in cartoons.
This is totally true! Where is the announcement about the great ANIMATOR they are going to get to make Bugs looks and move good? We don’t want any of this shit like the new Smurfs or (shudder!) Yogi Bear movie!
Chuck Jones and Robert McKimson had much more to do with Bug’s success than did Tex Avery. He’s very overrated in my opinion. When he left the Warners studio for MGM, he tried over and over again to create a character as popular as Bugs. The closest he got was Screwball Squirrel (remember him? Didn’t think so).
Is WB going to produce this future debacle as a live-action film or as an animated full-length Looney Tune? The two are not mutually inclusive, as the deplorable Back In Action proved. Hell, Space Jam wasn’t any good either; it was a 90 minute Michael Jordan puff piece. Feh!
Actually, the closest Tex got to recapturing his success with Bugs was Droopy- admittedly less well-known, but a definite fan favourite.
Tex Avery was a genius–many of his one-shot cartoons are among the best ever made. But his most famous post-WB creation was Droopy, who IS a classic character.
Warner Bros. should take a good look at what Disney has been doing with the Muppets recently, especially the YouTube shorts that have done an incredible job bringing Kermit & Company back to their crazy, anything goes, roots.
We don’t need another Space Jam. We need hilarious shorts filled with utter mayhem. Kids can handle ACME dynamite blowing stuff up. Stop playing it safe and get back to the heart of what made these characters so great.
Live action / CGI Bugs Bunny. They MUST hire Wally Shawn to be ive action Elmer Fudd!
I smell a disaster in the making. Have you seen the CGI Yogi Bear that’s coming this Fall? He — and the movie — look terrible.
Also — IMO Mel Blanc is just about irreplaceable. None of the Warner character voices have sounded good since he passed away.
I’m afraid this is just another example of corporate greed ransacking a studio’s proud legacy…
There’s a reason this is such a prolific image: http://www.americanmemorabilia.com/pics/33880_01_lg.jpg
This is such a bad idea. Even if someone involved with Elf is involved, it can only end in tears.
The personality that we all know as Bugs was best defined by the cool, reasoned and unflappable character that appeared mostly in the Chuck Jones cartoons of the 1940′s and 1950′s. Tex created Bugs (in ‘A Wild Hare’), McKimson and Freleng both, to a large extent, imitated Jones’ interpretation of the character (Clampett is a footnote and not worth mentioning).
The problem with the recent incarnations of Bugs and the other Looney Tunes characters is that the Warner executives don’t really understand them and thus rely on some sense that the characters are meant to be well, loony… They’re not and if they insist on doing things like ‘edging them up’ or contemporizing them as they did with Space Jam, and to a lesser degree Back In Action, this project will be little more than another expensively produced DVD product (if DVD’s still exist by the time this gets made).
A quick story about just how much Warner Bros. doesn’t understand theses characters: At the big unveiling of the new Bugs Bunny postage stamp back in the 90′s the studio with all of the hullaballoo deserving a movie premiere and all the pomp of a royal wedding, the then president of Consumer Products for the studio stood up in front of the assembled guests and media and delivered his rote line about having the best job in Hollywood: “I’m Bugs Bunny’s agent,” he quipped. Chuck Jones, who was seated one row in front of me, leaned over to someone and whispered (loudly enough for me and others to have heard), “No he’s not, he’s his goddamned pimp.”
If Chuck thought so, it was certainly good enough for me…
Let the kids have Mickey Mouse and leave Bugs Bunny for us adults!
Mel Blanc did NOT voice Elmer Fudd. Arthur Q. Bryan did the voice. Don’t get your facts wrong.