Animaniacs

I've been thinking about it, and I think the biggest challenge with trying to bring back Animaniacs is that the show was, in a lot of ways, lightning in a bottle. It came along at just the right moment, with the right creators and producer, and it all came together to give us a legitimately groundbreaking show that probably worked better that it had any right too. Everything about it is just so specific to the era it was created and the people who created it, and it's really hard to divorce it from that context.

Like, I can't imagine the show without Sherry Stone, Tom Rugger, Paul Rugg, and all the rest of the writers. They just put so much of themselves and their sense of humor into it, and that's kinda what made it so special.

Does any of this make any sense?

Edited by megaeliz on Oct 23rd 2019 at 10:02:55 AM

Warner in general was on fire at that moment in time. From Tiny Toons, Batman the Animated Series, Animaniacs, Pinky and the Brain, Freakazoid, etc were all excellent groundbreaking shows with sharp writing, great music and animation. It was honestly a golden age.

If it does move from variety show to just Animaniacs and Pinky and the Brain, I imagine the show is just going to be split between those two parts (~15 minutes each). And while those two bits are the best from the Original show, it'd kind of feel lackluster to only have those two bits.

Everything, to some extent, is lightning in a bottle. Trying to recreate what made something good in the first place in a reboot is often like alchemy in that things, more often than not, go horribly wrong.

It was a golden age, and it would have lasted longer if it hadn't been for the fact that a lot of the shows cost the WB money and didn't get the ratings they wanted. (Of course, even with a relative hit like Pinky And The Brain they kept trying to muck with it even though the creative staff knew better.) So when something cheaper and more appealing to kids came along, there went the WB's golden age of TV animation.

Edited by Aldo930 on Oct 23rd 2019 at 6:30:19 AM

I was worried about that too. They are definitely the strongest characters in the show, but I feel like they could wear thin pretty fast.

Edited by megaeliz on Mar 15th 2020 at 3:06:07 PM

Just for fun.

I love how much they get into it.

Edited by megaeliz on Oct 26th 2019 at 10:29:03 AM

The Warners, in particular, would have to be pretty heavily redesigned to carry anything longer than seven minutes. They're not made for longer stories - they're designed from top to bottom to be shorts characters - at their core one gag that comes lots of slapstick and reaction humor, for quick stints of humor.

It's how the movie allows them to carry a longer plot: by making them very different characters for most of it, and even then it still largely works by swapping between tons of different characters.

Most of the Animaniacs characters were that way, because the show was made to be a revival / Genre Throwback to the classic Looney Tunes / MGM-style shorts template. Simple characters doing crazy things. Them being shifted to 11 minutes might work, but I wouldn't want to see the Warners doing 22 straight minutes of anything.

Pinky and the Brain were the exception, because their humor didn't entirely come from them but from the situations they got into.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Oct 26th 2019 at 8:56:57 AM

The original show did half-hours with the characters that worked (“Taming of the Screwy,” “King Yakko”) so I can imagine it happening well if the right approach is taken.

Of course, the original show also did “Hooray for North Hollywood,” a longer Warners adventure which was pretty much this:

And that was the recap.

So it probably could go horribly wrong.

Edited by Aldo930 on Oct 26th 2019 at 9:28:09 AM

God, I love Skippy.

By the end of the show he was basically the writer mouthpiece for whenever they wanted to be cute and sardonic at the same time.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Oct 26th 2019 at 2:59:36 AM

A writer mouthpiece... DONE RIGHT? Le GASP!

The tricky thing about the Warners was that, throwback to the Looney Tunes era that they were, a lot of their stuff was very unlike the cartoons of today. Because the Warners are assholes. Their episodes' formula basically went like this:

There is a person who sucks. Like, so hard. So the Warners show up to take the piss out of him and/or ruin his life by being relentless trolls. Comedy ensues.

There's not a lot of cartoons like that today, largely because of Moral Guardians. It's hard to imagine a cartoon being made today featuring a candy shop owner who is a dick and refuses to donate to charity, so the Warners show up to trash his shop, ruin his sanity, and have him beaten half to death by a football team.

The Warners were violent, irreverent, wild, chaotic trolls to Asshole Victims that usually but not always deserved it. They were made from the same mold as Bugs Bunny, and it was great.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Oct 26th 2019 at 6:50:46 AM

Except there were multiple times where, while still being asses, they ultimately helped the person they were trolling; Albert Einstein, Abraham Lincoln, that King who was afraid of the Viper, Sherlock Holmes, and more I can't think of. There were also at least three characters where they either wouldn't, or couldn't, be ass holes towards; that one Character Ben Stein played, the Barney Parody (because he was utterly immune to it), and the Mary Poppins parody (who, in their own words, they wouldn't harass because she wouldn't harass them first... even though there are countless examples to the contrary).

So apparently the revival series is going to be airing on Hulu, of all places. My question is, why? Doesn't Disney own Hulu now? Wouldn't it make more sense to put it on HBO Max?

The Animaniacs is owned by Universal, who until recently were co-owners of Hulu. The Animaniacs going to Hulu exclusively was decided before Universal sold their stocks to Disney. It's the same reason Dreamworks classic films are on Hulu.

I thought it was owned by AT&T via Time Warner.

This was also before HBO Max was announced. I would not be surprised if it moves there.

First, I was like "wait, what?"

But then I quickly remembered how Animaniacs was brainstormed by Amblin Entertainment, which is part of Amblin Partners, which is part of Universal.

Yeah, legal mumbo jumbo sucks, but I reckon this Animaniacs reboot will EVENTUALLY come to HBO Max in the future.

Maybe.

Edited by TargetmasterJoe on Dec 9th 2019 at 4:35:57 AM

The Animaniacs (as well as Tiny Toons and Pinky and the Brain, and to a lesser extent, Freakazoid) is made in association with the Warner Bros. The Reboot is also a collaboration between Universal (through Amblin) and Warner.

According to fan podcast The Animanicast, we have a couple of photos of the revival's first scoring session with returning conductor Steve Bernstein. We also have a glimpse of the series footage through one of the pictures.

Yay, proper scoring sessions!

It's hard to tell from how blurry and low quality the picture is, but the Warners basically look exactly the same as far as I can tell.

Unrelated to the reboot, but this spec script someone created where the Warners mess with Elon Musk is great, and totally reads like something that could have been straight out of the show.

Edited by megaeliz on Feb 3rd 2020 at 3:13:28 PM

Getting flashbacks to the time someone got their spec script to Steven Spielberg's desk somehow

New interview with Rob Paulson where he talks about the reboot.

https://www.palipost.com/executive-produced-by-palisadian-steven-spielberg-the-animaniacs-reboot-eyes-fall-2020-launch/

This article from April has a few details about the 2020 series. Ralph the guard is not voiced by Frank Welker. He's instead voiced by Terry Crews, who's also a narrator. The Warner siblings, as well as Pinky And The Brain and Rita, will still keep their original voice actors. Trey Parker is also voicing 7 characters.