A rather devilish-looking new foe for Speedy Gonzales.
The Looney Tunes theatrical shorts were full of unused and different ideas.Works with their own pages
Examples
- Before Leon Schlesinger agreed to distribute the Bosko series for Warner Bros., Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising pitched the character to Paramount Pictures and Universal Pictures, both of which declined.
- The Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies short format was planned to be permanently revived in the early 2000s to coincide with the release of Looney Tunes: Back in Action, produced by Larry Doyle, who wrote Back in Action (and had previously made his name as a writer on The Simpsons and Beavis and Butt-Head).note Shorts planned for the series included "The Pig Stays in the Picture" (Porky tries to find a movie that his whole family can enjoy), "Dancing Pepe" (a chipmunk with a head cold falls for Pepe Le Pew on the dance floor), "A Very Daffy Christmas" (Daffy winds up at Santa's workshop while flying south for the winter) and "Guess Who's Coming to Meet the Parents" (Bugs brings a squirrel home to meet his mother). Six shorts were completed, but once the higher-ups at Warner Bros. saw them, they were so appalled by them that they fired Larry Doyle and cancelled the shorts still in-production. After tinkering with the shorts, they still planned on releasing them in theaters, but after Back In Action fared badly in box office they decided against it, with one of the shorts, "The Whizzard of Ow", having been included on the movie's DVD release, Eventually, "Hare and Loathing in Las Vegas" and "Attack of the Drones" were released on DVD collections for Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck (respectively), "Museum Scream" was included on the Looney Tunes Platinum Collection Volume 1 Blu-ray, and all six of the cartoons were included on the Blu-ray release of Back in Action in 2014.
- Foxy was originally planned to make a fourth appearance in "You Don't Know What You're Doin!" (1931) and the soundtrack had already been recorded with him in mind, but when Walt Disney ordered Rudy Ising to scrap Foxy for being a blatant plagiarism of Mickey Mouse, he was replaced with an eleventh hour ersatz named Piggy.
- The storyboards for "Porky's Party" show that Gabby Goat was also planned to make a fourth appearance, but was replaced with an unnamed bit player (a penguin with a very similar personality) in the final film. The same storyboards show that Petunia Pig was also set to appear.
- Mike Maltese originally considered calling Yosemite Sam "Texas Tiny", "Wyoming Willie", or "Denver Dan", but then settled on the final name.
- There was a short planned for the mid-50's
that was a parody of Snow White (which would feature a take-off of Marilyn Monroe). It was going to be directed by Friz Freleng, but it was shelved before any animation was made. - The first short Stan Freberg worked on as a voice actor was titled For He's A Jolly Good Fala, which was to have been directed by Bob Clampett, revolving around about Franklin D. Roosevelt and his dog Fala. Production ceased after Roosevelt's death; it is unknown how much of the cartoon was completed, although some footage was inserted into the Chuck Jones cartoon Fresh Airedale (a rather dark cartoon about a Karma Houdini dog who tries to kidnap another dog that's been declared a national hero).
- Milt Franklyn had written two new arrangements for "Merrily We Roll Along" in the early '60s, but they were never used for some reason. Theme 1, theme 2.
- Back when Warner Bros. merged with Seven Arts in 1967, the in-house cartoon studio was reopened and new characters were introduced. There were several things planned for these characters, but couldn't be due to the studio being shut down again after only two years (and with it the end of the series).
- Rapid Rabbit and Quick Brown Fox, the stars of 1969's Rabbit Stew and Rabbits, Too!, were to appear in more cartoons.
- There were to be some new characters such as Super Snooper (no relation to Hanna-Barbera's character of the same name), Hobo Bo, Choo-Choo Jones, Jeanie the Genius, the Absent-Minded Mr. Memo, Rock and Rowel, and a Yosemite Sam-esque pirate Jolly Roger.
- Animated Adaptations of the Keystone Kops and Puff the Magic Dragon (the latter being another collaboration with Peter, Paul and Mary a la Norman Normal (1968)) were also set to appear.
- Speaking of Norman Normal, Stookey said that he wanted more cartoons with the character.
- Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner were set to return in a featurette known as Road Runer Cavalcade with the Bird Watcher, where a live-action bird watcher would observe the two characters chasing each other (possibly through recycled clips from older cartoons).
- A live-action/animation hybrid special featurette was planned: Innocents Abroad, where Merlin the Magic Mouse and Second Banana take a live-action Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn on a tour across an animated world. It was likely scrapped due to Hanna-Barbera developing a similar hybrid series for television: The New Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
- Pictured: There was meant to be a new foe for Speedy Gonzales named Butch Catsidy, a new Tasmanian Devil-esque feline who would've replaced Daffy Duck.
- Had Tex Avery stayed with the studio instead of quitting after he butted heads with Leon Schlesinger over the ending of "The Heckling Hare". Speaking of, the ending to that cartoon if it wasn't cut also counts, with Bugs and Willoughby falling off three really high cliffs instead of just one.
- On the 3/18/20 episode of "Stu's Show", Jerry Beck told about how there was, at one point, an idea to make chronological Looney Tunes DVD sets by years- e.g. "the 1946 cartoons". Unfortunately, due to a variety of reasons, it never got past the conceptual phase.
- Since certain characters were exclusively used by certain directors, it's interesting to think how a different unit would've handled them. For example, Tweety was solely handled by Friz Freleng and his team Note, as was Yosemite Sam Note; Hippety Hopper, Foghorn Leghorn, and Taz were solely the domain of Robert McKimson; Road Runner was all Chuck Jones Note, etc.
- The "abstract WB" intro by Chuck Jones made for "Now Hear This" was originally used only for experimental one-off shorts, and the shorts featuring the classic characters would continue to use the usual rings. After Termite Terrace's closure, however, all of the shorts wound up using the abstract intro due to the final Termite Terrace short, "Señorella and the Glass Huarache", using the intro.
- Chuck Jones wanted the sequence to open and close the rest of his cartoons, but he was fired from the studio at that point.
- Chuck Jones was going to direct "The Iceman Ducketh". However, he was fired from Warners early on in the film's production due to breach of contract, and so it was directed by one of Jones' former animators, Phil Monroe, instead. Indeed, the cartoon seems to bear Jones' style, as it was co-directed, like all of his cartoons at the time, by Maurice Noble, and animated by Jones' usual team (Ken Harris, Richard Thompson, etc.).
- The woodpecker from "Peck Up Your Troubles" was meant to be a recurring character, but after taking over Bob Clampett's unproduced fourth project "Tweety Pie", Friz Freleng decided Tweety should become Sylvester's co-star instead.
- The model sheets of their respective debut cartoons reveal that Wile E. Coyote's name would be "Don Coyote" (a take on Don Quixote) and Tweety's would be "Orson" (The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries actually brought back the original pink Tweety as a separate invididual from the final one and give them this name).
- Caricatures of Bette Davis and Katharine Hepburn were made for "Hollywood Steps Out" but ultimately not used in the final film. There is also an unused scene of Gary Cooper bent double to dance with little Shirley Temple; a production cel is online.
- According to this website, there were listed three cartoons with MPAA numbers which were never completed nor released: a Bugs Bunny cartoon called "Lay On, MacBugs", a Snow White parody known as "Snow-White Dwarfs", and, in the DePatie-Freleng Enterprises era, a Daffy Duck short known as "Daffy's Aunt Sam".
- It also states that "Well Worn Daffy" was going to be named "Gunga Daffy".
- As stated by Bob Bergen, there were plans for a Daffy Duck film in the late 90s based on the Duck Dodgers short from 1953. Those plans went nowhere but the idea was made into a TV series in 2003 instead. Animation clips from the unproduced movie made it into the show's intro according to Bergen.
- In 1997 a pitch for a prime time variety TV series called "The Daffy Duck Program" that would have Daffy Duck as the main character with Porky Pig and Foghorn Leghorn as side characters developed and Pitched by Paul Rugg and John McCann of Freakazoid! fame, It was described as The Larry Sanders Show mixed with The Jack Benny Program and The Muppet Show meets the Looney Toons. The pitch was rejected. The pitch has been revealed on Spike Brandt's Instagram.
- In April 2020 The Secret Life of Pets writer Brian Lynch has leaked on Twitter a script from 1999 for a Live-Action/CGI Hybrid Looney Tunes movie called Varsity Bugs, described as Billy Madison with Looney Tunes. The plot involved a studio executive who takes over the Warner Bros. Studio who wants to kick out the Looney Tunes and introduce his own group of cooler hipper CGI characters. He does so by finding a clause in a contract that needs at least a high school diploma to work there; seeing that Bugs and company don't have them, they're forced to go to an all-human live-action school.
- There were plans for a Marvin The Martian Live-Action/CGI Hybrid film in 2008 with Mike Myers playing the titular character and schedule for a 2011 release. The film would have involved Marvin trying to destroy the Earth during Christmas by becoming a competitor of Santa Claus but being prevented from accomplishing his goal when Santa wraps him inside a gift box. The film was later pulled off the schedule in 2010 and with no new information of its release since it was presumed that the film was scrapped. Test footage of the film was leaked in late 2012.
- Pepé Le Pew was supposed to be a one-cartoon wonder (which explains why "Odor-Able Kitty" ended with Pepe revealed to be an adulterous husband whose French accent was faked). Had it not been for Eddie Selzer rather nastily claiming that the Pepe cartoons weren't funny, Chuck wouldn't have continued them.
- He was also originally supposed to make a cameo in Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
- Pepe Le Pew was planned to have his own Live-Action/CGI Hybrid film titled Pepé Le Pew in City of Light with other Looney Tunes such as Wile E. Coyote and Elmer Fudd serving as side characters with Mike Myers playing the titular character and with Max Landis serving as writer. The film was shelved partly (and ironically) due to Max Landis' sexual assault claims in 2017. This was a moot point because, given the character's controversial status in recent years, the film will most likely never happen.
- According to the DVD commentary, they originally planned to use actual audio from To Have And Have Not in "Bacall to Arms" to sell the parody, but for legal reasons they weren't allowed to. The final cartoon has Carl Stalling scoring the scene and has Dave Barry and Sara Berner sub in for Bogart and Bacall.
- "Rabbit Fire" was originally going to be titled "What's Up, Duck"?
- "Claws For Alarm" was going to be in 3D, much like "Lumber-Jack Rabbit", but at that point the studio was shuttered and wouldn't open until early 1954.
- In 1982, Warner Bros. began discussing reacquring their pre-1950 films and the pre-1948 Looney Tunes (which they had sold to Associated Artists Productions in 1956) from MGM/UA, who ended up with them after series of mergers. This would have reunited the whole Looney Tunes cartoon library 14 years before it actually happened, when Time Warner merged with Turner Entertainment (who bought them from MGM/UA in 1986).
- In the early 1960s, Tedd Pierce penned a script involving Sylvester and Speedy Gonzales that Robert McKimson disapproved of. He sold it to Gene Deitch, who was desperate for a good Tom and Jerry story; the script became 1962's Tall in the Trap.
- Marvin the Martian, being unnamed for a long while, was originally given the name "Antwerp" in promotional materials and the stage show version of Bugs Bunny in Space. It wouldn't be until The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Movie that he would get his official name.
- Around 1964, Bill Lava composed a new take on "Merrily We Roll Along" for Merrie Melodies which obviously didn't take, but snippets of it can be heard at the very start of The Bugs Bunny-Road Runner Hour/Show and the opening of The Merrie Melodies Show (with the ending theme used for both series' title cards), as well as the ratings screen in the Seven Arts era. A calliope arrangement of the theme can be heard in the Cool Cat cartoon "Three-Ring Wing Ding."
- The original ending of "Martian Through Georgia" had the Martian deciding to stay with the Beatniks, but Chuck Jones wasn't a fan of the ending and forcibly changed it to the "stay with your own kind" moral.
- Wabbit: A Looney Tunes Production started off as another attempt at making theatrical shorts with a PG-13 slant. One of them was “Your Bunny or Your Life", where the Grim Reaper finally claims Bugs' life and the rabbit ends up going to Hell due to his terrible past. Unfortunately, this coincided with the collapse of the family film market, and it was moved to TV.
- Two video games were planned for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, but were cancelled when Sunsoft's American offices closed due to bankruptcy in 1995. The first was Wile E.'s Revenge, which would have been the sequel to Road Runner's Death Valley Rally. Wile E.'s Revenge would have had Wile E. Coyote as the playable character, trying to catch Road Runner. The second was Sylvester and Tweety. This game would have had Sylvester as the playable character, with the goal of the game being to catch Tweety, while avoiding enemies like Granny, Spike, the Red Cat, Hippety Hopper, and the robot dogs, similar to Sylvester and Tweety in Cagey Capers for the Sega Genesis.
- Sylvester and Tweety in Cagey Capers for the Sega Genesis was also planned to have 8-bit ports for the Sega Master System and Game Gear. These were shown off at Summer CES 1993, but neither any footage of the game nor any prototype builds have resurfaced. The only remains of those versions that have been rediscovered are in a magazine scan◊, which shows that they would have been drastically different from the Genesis version. One screenshot shows that the game would have had levels such as Australia, the North Pole, and Mexico, as well as a Hub Level that would allow Sylvester to choose which order to play the levels in.
- The 1962 featurette The Adventures of the Road Runner was originally a pilot for a primetime TV show (not to be confused with the Saturday morning Road Runner Show that would air on CBS). At the time ABC passed it on, work was already underway on the second episode, whose bridge sequences were to feature Bugs Bunny as a guest star; that would instead be reworked into the theatrical short Hare-Breadth Hurry, which might explain Bugs' odd role as a fourth-wall breaking commentator.
