... Yet again.
The Nikkster's site breaks this story:
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. ...
No offense to Mr. Berenbaum, but me, I'd put some top-flight animation story artists on the project and create some beat boards, maybe flesh out a couple of sequences. Then I'd bring in the live-action writer to collaborate.
You would end up with something more cartoony and visual, and the writer would be there to plus the dialogue, plot, and characters.
Sadly, it's seldom done this way anymore. Most film execs are more comfortable starting with a script. And they wouldn't have a clue who the high-powered story artists even are. ...
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13 comments:
Puke.
I'm done. I don't care anymore.
well Elf was really good. they've hired a smart writer.
...Looney Tunes, back in action. :(
(And while Warner continues to spin paranoid inferiority complexes about "a new generation of kids not recognizing the Looney characters", if there is a problem with character identification, I suspect the corporate situation could have been remedied earlier by Warner possibly not heave-ho'ing all the old cartoons off their cable channel in the first place!! just so they could show more "Chowder".)
Elf was STUPID. It made money because Will Ferrell was popular then.
Bugs still has some nostalgic pull, but he needs a top-flight writer who understands what made him great to put him in the forefront again.
Having suffered through both Space Jam and Back In Action, I'm highly skeptical about this film...
Let's try to think of the best-case scenario:
- the CG characters look better than the Road Runner CG theatrical shorts
- the live-action/animation interaction is better than Who Framed Roger Rabbit
- the writing is funnier than Elf
- the animation is as inventive and alive as the classic WB cartoons
Get to work, WB.
When will studios realize that we dont want to watch these beloved characters for 89 minutes... Their legacy has always been the well scripted 7 minute short... Any longer than that and it just gets stupid.
I'm with Pvt. SNAFU
You have a point about the running time.
Even when they cut a whole bunch of the best Chuck Jones shorts together to make that Bugs Bunny movie, the length made it wearying.
"well Elf was really good. they've hired a smart writer."
Elf was a TV movie of the week with Will Ferrel. Not much more. And animation couldn't be uglier or worse than it was in roger rabbit (which also had a piece of S**t script).
So, in light of this news, we're agreeing to stop complaining about Bugs Bunny's big feet in The Looney Tunes Show, right?
^ NEVER!!!!!!
Bugs still has some nostalgic pull, but he needs a top-flight writer who understands what made him great to put him in the forefront again.
The new overly nostalgia-struck post-Roger Rabbit generation writers seem to be concentrating so much on Bugs' "coolness" and on showing off how many of his Classic Catchphrases they remember from Saturday morning, they've taken all the sympathy out of the Chuck version and all the wisecracking moxie out of the McKimson version--And just turned him into a smug sociopath who hands out dynamite sticks to all and sundry and says "Ain't I a stinker?(tm)"
...Can we at least complain about that? ;)
^Agreed. The Bugs in "Back in Action" was insufferably smug. That's not the real Bugs, the cynic with a heart of gold, the guy who practically killed himself once trying to get a baby penguin back home - and did so complaining all the way. Clearly, the suits at Warner don't understand Bugs and worse, they hire "writers" who don't understand him either. If they similarly eff up this CGI version, may they be struck with a major influx of Coyote Karma. WHAM!
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