Chatterbox - Western Animation

It's by the director of My Entire High School Sinking Into The Sea, Dash Shaw. According to the official site, "the film follows cryptozookeepers through a richly-drawn hallucinatory world as they struggle to capture a Baku (a legendary dream-eating hybrid creature) and begin to wonder if they should display these rare beasts in the confines of a zoo, or if these mythical creatures should remain hidden and unknown."

It's apparently getting a theatrical release on August 20th, but I'm not sure how wide it is. I also don't know what the movie's budget is.

Listened to an interview with voice actor Jason Marsden recently, and he talked about working on the Peter Pan and the Pirates animated series. They recorded the dialog radio-show style, with as many actors in the room as they could manage. Marsden describes Tim Curry, who voiced Captain Hook (and won an Emmy for his portrayal, too) as being quiet and mostly keeping to himself; he said he wondered if Curry simply didn't like kids or didn't quite know how to deal with them, though Curry did have the habit of flipping paperclips at the kids and then pretending not to have done it ("so maybe he did like us,'' Marsden speculated). There was one occasion when, after a particularly boisterous bit of recording, dialog director Michael Bell was getting the kids settled down so that Curry could do his bit; Bell said something like "quiet now guys, an actor is going to work." Marsden, who was 15 at the time, says he piped up sarcastically to say "Where?" Curry growled "Up here, shit-head," which just made the room break up more (Marsden, for his part, wasn't offended, he thought it was hilarious). Marsden said he met Curry some years later at another function, and Curry was nothing but cordial to him (though Marsden said he wasn't entirely sure Curry even remembered him).

The Hollywood Critics Association nominated the following shows for Best Animated Series:

• Animaniacs (2020)
• Invincible (2021)
• Bob's Burgers
• Harley Quinn
• Big Mouth

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The BBC is looking for the next generation-defining piece of animation content for kids. The initiative is known as "Ignite", which aims towards domestically produced animation in the UK, to balance out the US dominated imports.

Edited by XMenMutant22 on Jul 8th 2021 at 12:31:55 PM

Yet another 1980s series is getting rebooted: SilverHawks will be getting a revival.

People were asking for that since it was revealed S2 of the 2011 Thundercats was supposed to use the Silverhawks.

The big question of course is how will it look.

Bird/metal themed cyborgs in space fighting the intergalactic mafia. Sounds good to me.

Fewer people are rabid about Silverhawks, so they ought to have a little more leeway in their interpretation (though I suspect some people manufacture their rabid fannishness just because they like frothing at the mouth).

Edited by Robbery on Jul 9th 2021 at 5:19:40 AM

Hey, when The Banana Splits Movie came out, I saw a ton of people frothing at the mouth because how dare they turn this beloved and iconic children's show into a bloody horror movie, and I was just like... "Really? The Banana Splits elicits this strong a reaction from people? I barely remember it even existed before I heard about this movie."

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Silverhawks huh?

They've been partly metal, and partly real, but will this revival be completely good?

Time will tell, time will tell.

One Strip! One Strip!

So what happened to the "old cartoons" channel the big networks used to have like Nick Rewind, Boomerang and whatever Disney had (if it had any)? Are they practically dead?

In the USA specifically:

• Nick still has Nick Rewind on their TeenNick cable network, showing Nicktoons from the 90s to early 2000s, airing from 12am EST - 6pm EST.
  • The dedicated Nick channel on the free Pluto TV app occasionally airs some classic 2000s, though some are currently exclusive to the free Latin America counterpart.
• Boomerang is a strange case of "define old". They still air classic Scooby-Doo, Looney Tunes, and Tom and Jerry, but also their updated iterations. Some CN cartoons from the 2000s like Camp Lazlo also appear, along with an odd helping of Garfield and Friends. Otherwise, expect semi-modern programming that CN should be airing more.
  • Interestingly, they do tend to airing more older programming on special holidays, like Thanksgiving and Earth Day.
• Disney, uh, doesn't really have much, if at all? Even Disney Junior seemed to have stopped airing the few Disney Afternoon shows it allowed on air.

A number of streaming services offer the classic Disney Afternoon shows (I know Comcast On Demand has Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers in it's entirety, while only seasons one and two were ever released on DVD), though I think only Disney + has Disney's Adventures of the Gummi Bears.

I wonder how streaming effects voice actor residuals?

According to the following, there are 100+ animated projects aimed at adult audiences in production in North America this year.

https://www.cartoonbrew.com/sponsored-by-toon-boom/heres-a-new-report-that-documents-the-booming-trend-of-adult-animated-series-205873.html

Speaking of adult animation, weeks after announcing his Ubisoft cartoon, Adi Shankar (Castlevania) is teaming up with PUBG to produce an animated project for the game.

Edited by XMenMutant22 on Jul 20th 2021 at 1:56:25 PM

Kind of a random observation that popped into my head: Hanna-Barbera seemed to have an effective process for producing The Flintstones, so why does it seem like they had such a hard time not making questionable decisions and running into other issues with The Jetsons? The only problem I'd imagine they audience could have had if there were less difficulties would have been They Copied It, So It Sucks!, but even with the difficulties, the similarities were one thing that didn't seem to bother the audience, leaving me to think that there was plenty of potential for real success if Hanna-Barbera was more thoughtful with Jetsons.

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What "questionable decisions" and "other issues" do you mean?

The show aired originally on Sunday nights, opposite Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color, which is probably why it didn't get much attention. It did pretty well when ABC moved it to Saturday mornings, where it's original 24 episodes ran for decades (first on ABC, later on CBS and NBC, too). They did 36 more episodes for syndication in the '80's.

Fun fact: HB considered doing a sequel series, set ten years after the events of the first, in the '70's. CBS rejected the proposal, and it eventually morphed into The Partrige Family, 2200 AD, whose future aesthetic was identical to that depicted in The Jetsons.

Edited by Robbery on Jul 29th 2021 at 8:56:20 AM

Well, I was just reading about the decision to replace Judy's VA with some random celebrity for the movie, which backfired even further when, best I can tell, said celebrity's fad faded rather quickly. Our own page also describes the original run being in color as more trouble than it was worth, given the limited portion of the audience who could view it in color, but then, I acknowledge tbat we're by no means a definitive position holder.

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Replacing professional VA's with celebrities isn't something I like in general, and it's always a dicey proposition. Even a good actor might not be a good voice actor, and Tiffany wasn't even an actor. At the same time, Billy Joel did an excellent job playing Dodger in Oliver and Company (though, of course, he wasn't replacing anyone else), and he wasn't an actor either, so sometimes these things work out, and sometimes they don't.

Ultimately, though, I don't think The Jetsons movie stood or fell based on who played Judy. It just wasn't terribly good.

Edited by Robbery on Jul 30th 2021 at 8:54:50 AM

So, I consider myself pretty knowledgeable of animation. I can usually recognize something on sight.

Hell, today a relative was watching some retrospective on the original power rangers and I recognized the voice of old Zack Taylor without even seeing him.

So yeah. Pretty knowledgeable of animation and old school stuff, which is why I ask this question with all the humility I can muster: Who the hell is this lady, and what show is she even from?

Seriously.

One Strip! One Strip!

I remember she's from TMNT '87.

She's a minor villain by the name of... (looks it up) Shreeka.

Edited by lbssb on Aug 24th 2021 at 10:56:33 AM

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Chromosphere, best known for their art direction and intro work on Carmen Sandiego, seem to have an original All-CGI Cartoon web series known as Yuki 7.

On the subject of those 100 animated projects for adult audiences, which of them are TV series, which are for streaming services, and which are going to be theatrical films?

Fox TV is developing an animated series based on Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, which was previously adapted by Don Bluth into The Secret of NIMH.

(Note that the Fox Network was one of the few parts of Fox that Disney did not acquire, so this is not a Disney production.)

Interesting

New theme music also a box

I still remember how someone tried to muster up a reboot movie of The Secret of NIMH and everyone responded with one big groan over how it completely missed the point of the initial animated movie.

That said, the article calls this series an "animated drama" and an "event series," so that already tells me that the game plan seems to be less Family Guy and more Infinity Train.

I can only pray that it manages to stick the landing.

So this will be based on the novel, rather than Bluth's film adaptation?