It's time Looney Tunes had a creative rethink

When news broke earlier this week that Max was removing the old school Looney Tunes shorts from the streaming service, I wasn’t surprised. We don’t know the exact reasons, but it’ll stem from low viewership. Why aren’t people still watching old Looney Tunes cartoons?

Well, why would they?

Let me put it out there: I’m love Looney Tunes. I have watched old Looney Tunes cartoons in recent months with my kid (who was really taken with Porky Pig, of all characters… seriously, whose favourite is Porky Pig?). I have watched Looney Tunes cartoons for my entire life and it isn’t going to stop anytime soon.

But, earlier in the week I watched the new animated Looney Tunes film The Day The Earth Blew Up and it was immediately apparent to me why Looney Tunes isn’t the cultural force that it once was: It doesn’t speak to modern audiences.

First off, let me make clear: The Day The Earth Blew Up is pretty good. The animation is good, the jokes land pretty well (it had me properly laughing out loud a few times), and the story works. It was a year or two too mature for my three year-old with some body horror aspects, but Looney Tunes was never really for the youngest of kids - those early shorts were for adults and older kids.

And the voice work is quite good. Voice actor Eric Bauza isn’t Mel Blanc, but he puts in respectable work here. It is playing in cinemas in the US right now and debuts in Australia on March 27. If you have older kids or are a Looney Tunes loving adult, go and see it. You’ll have a good time at the cinema.

The movie isn’t great, though. And that’s almost entirely because it is 2025 and the film, like all Looney Tunes product, still feels heavily grounded in the cultural sensibilities of the 1950s. And putting a mobile phone into Daffy Duck’s hand doesn’t change that.

The Day The Earth Blew Up is about Daffy Duck and Porky Pig getting caught up in an alien invasion that impacts the local gum factory where they have just gotten production floor work. They need a job to pay for their recently damaged family home.

And while so much in the film works, there’s a general vibe to it that it is a bit tired, well-worn, and a relic of yesteryear. The visual language of Looney Tunes has never really updated and it is glaringly obvious in this film with the alien invasion storyline - the art design is rooted in the same 1950s-era cartoons where we saw Marvin Martian take on Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny in a handful of shorts.

It’s all 50’s looking flying saucers and lasers and the like.

It isn’t terribly exciting - we have been watching Looney Tunes doing this for over 70 years. Daffy and Porky faced off against aliens in Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century back in 1953 and it all looks just so similar…

Americana, political figures, the war, and Pismo Beach as a holiday destination* were all depicted in a way that was hyper relevant in the 1930s through to the late 60s. But, the world is very different now, culture has changed, and satire is more complex.

(*Yes, I know that Pismo Beach is just a funny-sounding cartoon joke name)

If Looney Tunes had evolved with all of that instead of serving more as a love letter to the aesthetics of the original cartoons, more people would be going back and enjoying the original cartoons in the same way that modern fans of The Simpsons continue to watch the very earliest episodes as part of the continuum of the show. But right now there is a major disconnect. It’s little wonder that viewers aren’t quite there for it in the way they once were.

Related: Coyote vs ACME may be about to be rescued from the vault

Indie distributor Ketchup Entertainment, which released The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie after Warner Bros. Discovery decided to shop the film around rather than release it themselves, is reportedly talking to WBD about releasing the live action animation hybrid film Coyote vs ACME. WBD famously put the film in a vault and wrote it off as a tax loss because it couldn’t find a buyer.

The deal isn’t done yet, but the deal is said to be around $50m, which would still make it a loss for WBD which reportedly spent $70m on the feature.

Read more: Deadline

Also related: The Alto Knights sees a release

Playing in cinemas from today is new Warner Bros film The Alto Knights. The film is a 50s-era mob movie written by Goodfellas scribe Nicholas Pileggi. Directed by Barry Levinson, the film is about the war between real life respectable businessmen Vito Genovese and Frank Costello, with Robert de Niro playing both roles.

The film itself is fine - with the talent involved, it is certainly very well made. But none of the characters are especially interesting and everything about it feels like a movie made for an audience in 1991. There’ll be an audience receptive to that, but I found myself squirming in my seat as the film just went through the motions.

I love a throwback, but every throwback still needs to speak to the lived experience of its audience to a certain degree. This film never does that. It’s almost the exact same issue Looney Tunes faces…

Oh, and I still don’t understand why de Niro plays the role of both gangsters…

Ted Talks

There’s only so much one can learn reading a Variety interview with the (co)CEO of Netflix. But, there’ll always be one or two nuggets that are a bit interesting.

Today you can read Ted Sarandos’ 90 minute interview with Variety reporters Matt Donnelly, Ramin Setoodeh where he will tell you things like that there won’t be a dry eye watching the final season of Stranger Things (eh… we’ll see about that, Ted).

But there are a few thoughts he has that are worth ploughing through the interview for.

First we have this insight into early lessons learned producing original dramas. The biggest lesson came not from making House of Cards, but in dealing with Marvel Television on the deal for shows that included Daredevil and Jessica Jones. At the time it was under the control of the financially tightfisted chairman Ike Perlmutter:

On our shows, we were dealing with the old Marvel television regime, which operated independently at Disney. And they were thrifty. And every time we wanted to make the shows bigger or better, we had to bang on them. Our incentives were not well aligned. We wanted to make great television; they wanted to make money. I thought we could make money with great television.

What did you learn from that experience?

You want to work with people whose incentives are aligned with yours. When people are producing for you, they’re trying to produce as cheaply as possible. My incentive is to make it as great as possible. That’s a lesson that I take forever. As producers, whatever [Marvel] didn’t spend, they kept. So every time we wanted to add something to the show to make it better, it was a fistfight.

The second is where he offers the opinion most of us share about Netflix competitor Max:

You have long admired HBO as a viewer. What did you think when they dropped the “HBO” from “HBO Max” and went with “Max” as the name of their streaming service?

It was a surprise! We would always watch what HBO was doing, and at one point they had HBO, HBO Go, HBO Now and HBO Max. And I said, “When they’re serious, all those names will go away, and it’ll just be HBO.” I would have never guessed HBO would have gone away. They put all that effort into one thing that they can tell the consumer — it should be HBO.

You can read the article in full at Variety.

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News Desk

• Solar Opposites will end at Hulu after season 5. Read: THR

• The Big Bang Theory spin-off focused on the guys at the comic shop will be titled Stuart Fails To Save The Universe. Read: Deadline

• A new Power Rangers series is in development for Disney+. Read: Dark Horizons

• Netflix has announced its first MMO game, Spirit Crossing. Read: The Verge

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Trailer Park

The long-awaited JJ Abrams show Duster debuts May 15 on Max.

The life of a gutsy getaway driver for a growing crime syndicate in 1970s Southwestern America.

The Conners returns March 26 for its final 6-episode season.

The Handmaid’s Tale returns (finally) for its sixth and final season April 6. It’s been so long that I don’t remember what the show was about. Can someone remind me: Patriarchy… good or bad?

Law & Order: Organized Crime is back for season 5 on Peacock April 17.

The Diamond Heist debuts on Netflix April 16.

A stranger-than-fiction crime caper follows the attempted robbery of a priceless diamond, told by the gangsters who did it and the police on their tail. Executive produced by Guy Ritchie ("The Gentlemen"), created by the award-winning team behind Man on Wire

Karma debuts April 6 on Netflix.

A fateful accident intertwines six lives in a thrilling tale of karma and crime, where each must face their own dark truths and connections.

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That’s the newsletter for today.

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