![]() ![]() Most of all, they watched the original cartoons, more than 1,000 in all. To prepare, the crew read classic texts about the show (“Bugs Bunny: 50 Years and Only One Grey Hare”) and watched the sorts of vaudeville-inspired acts the original artists had drawn from (The Three Stooges, Laurel and Hardy). “I’d say there was a good month of just terror,” he added. “It’s like someone saying, ‘All right everybody, we’re writing new Beatles songs! Everyone get to work writing Beatles songs.’” “It’s hard, any time you have to work on your favorite thing,” said Alex Kirwan, a writer and supervising producer. “I thought it would be fun,” Ryan said.Īfter the initial high, the gravity of the project set in. ![]() Before his “Looney Tunes” gig, Ryan was perhaps best known for his work on the indie comic books “Angry Youth Comix” and “Prison Pit,” which feature frequent scenes of nudity, torture, bodily excretions and random violence. “I was like, you’re hired,” Browngardt said.įor the position of story editor, Browngardt brought on the Los Angeles-based indie comics artist Johnny Ryan. A lifelong fan, Khatam had collected and cataloged QuickTime versions of every “Looney Tunes” short since their beginnings in 1930 - something the studio itself had neglected to do. He enlisted the animator Jim Soper for character design (“I’ve been waiting my whole life for this call,” he told Browngardt) as well as the storyboard artist Ryan Khatam. Browngardt quickly began assembling a crew of true believers, dogged fans who had watched the originals on syndicated TV. Over the years, “Looney Tunes,” combined with their sister series “Merrie Melodies,” have been nominated for 22 Academy Awards, winning five four have been inducted into the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress.Īfter a meeting between Browngardt and Sam Register, the president of Warner Bros. Launched in 1930, the film shorts were created to run before features in movie theaters before moving to TV in 1960. The original cartoons are now considered among the greatest in animated comedy. “As much as we possibly could, we treated the production in that way.” had never stopped making “Looney Tunes” cartoons?’” said Peter Browngardt, the series executive producer and showrunner. Aesthetically, the shorts take their cues from the “Looney Tunes” glory years of the 1940s and ’50s, more revival than reboot. The fact that they’re on a streaming platform means viewers can watch one or two before a movie, as the original audiences enjoyed them in the days before TV, or binge watch dozens at a time. The shorts range from one to six minutes in length and star some of Warner Bros.’s most enduring properties (Bugs is still the studio’s official mascot). But in both form and function, “Looney Tunes Cartoons” hearkens back to the franchise’s roots. ![]() While “Looney Tunes” has been brought back repeatedly over the years, it has almost always been with an eye toward modernizing the franchise. (AT&T, which bought Time Warner in 2018, controls the entire portfolio.) film and television, among other properties. It premiered this week as part of HBO Max, the new streaming service combining shows and movies from the Time Warner entertainment empire, which includes HBO, TNT, TBS, CNN and Warner Bros. The resulting series, “Looney Tunes Cartoons,” is a throwback effort being used to help fill out a shiny new platform. ![]()
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