From Newsgroup: rec.arts.tv



New ThunderCats Movie Officially Confirmed,
5 Years After Cartoon Network's Last Cancellation
-------------------------------------------------
5 years on from the last Cartoon Network series, and almost 40 years
since the original series ended, Warner Bros animation has finally
announced development of a new animated ThunderCats movie. The news
was revealed at Annecy International Animation Film Festival.
Previously, Adam Wingard was attached to direct a separate
live-action movie, and recently confirmed the project is still in
development, but the animated movie is likely to land sooner.

Since the original series ended in 1989, there have been two
revivals: Cartoon Network's Thundercats in 2011, which was
unceremoniously cancelled after just one season (and whose cancelled
LEGO tie-in line became LEGO Legends of Chima), and then
ThunderCats Roar, in 2020. Both revivals deviated from the source
material, with different results, and the more comedic 2020 show was
widely panned (to a degree that felt unfair in hindsight). Wingard
promised his live-action remake would explicitly be true to the
original, and hopefully, this new animated movie will follow that
trend too.

There's currently no new update on the live-action movie, which was
described as a "CGI-hybrid" project, but ThunderCats has an
interesting history of attempted movie revivals. Ahead of the new
animated movie and Wingard's remake, Jerry O'Flaherty was tapped to
direct the first attempt back in 2007 with a script from Paul Sopocy.
Ultimately, despite being given a 2010 release date, the project was
never given the green light, but ThunderCats fans did get to see
leaked test footage showing an adult Lion-O battling Slithe with the
Sword of Omens. On reflection, it is perhaps not the worst thing that
the project didn't see the light of day:

Leaked Test Footage (2mins 13secs)
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7My6R3-oXHM>

An animated movie is the right move for ThunderCats in the current
market. Masters of the Universe was backed by a similarly popular
1980s IP, and has only just passed $100 million at the box office,
despite a reported production budget of twice that (and that's
without mentioning marketing spend). There is certainly appetite from
fans of the original to see a new movie, as proven by the reactions
to Wingard's announced project, but you have to wonder whether the
kind of budget needed to make such a high-concept sci-fi would be
justified against a potential box office take. It certainly wouldn't
be if ThunderCats performed similarly to Masters of the Universe. And
this way, Warner Bros can test the waters with an animated release
before weighing up the live-action alternative, assuming that's now
on the backburner.

The key to any ThunderCats revival will be capturing the original
audience - which means not messing with the formula that made it so
popular - but also balancing enough innovation to broaden the appeal
to new audience members. Lots of the analysis around Masters of the
Universe suggests the latter was not achieved (though it's nonsense,
because Travis Knight's excellent movie is transformative and a love
letter at the same time, and Amazon's commitment to a sequel should
prove smart when it captures a huge audience on streaming). That's
not a simple ask, but it remains the most important one.



<https://comicbook.com/movies/news/new-thundercats-animated-movie-announced/>





--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2