We haven’t heard much about the details of the announced Thundercats animated reboot. But now an interview by MTV’s Splash Page from series producer Michael Jelenic gives us some new details. Jelenic, who also has worked as producer on one of my favorite current animated shows, Batman: The Brave and The Bold, said of the direction of the art: “We have some great artists. We’re using a very famous Japanese animation studio, Studio4C, which did ‘The Animatrix.’ They’re going to have their signature stuff on it. It’s going to be pretty epic.”
Pretty epic? Thundercats? Purr-fect. But, wait, who’s doing the art?
Studio 4°C (株式会社スタジオよんどしい Kabushiki-Gaisha Sutajio Yondo Shii according to wikipedia) has done a lot of stuff I think most geeks would have seen, including the “Kid’s Story” segment of The Animatrix (which you can watch from google free of charge here) and two segments of “>Batman: Gotham Knight which is really worth watching in its entirety, but their segments are especially good, blending good action and character and setting just the right mood.
But this is Thundercats we’re talking about? Batman and The Matrix can exist in gritty, washed out worlds. Do we really want Thundercats not in splendid color so we can see those awesome pastel jumpsuits everyone wore? </sarcasm> From Jelenic:
“I think when people see the final character designs, people will think it’s a different take, but it will feel very familiar to the old series. The colors aren’t quite as bright as they were. I’s a little darker take, but you’ll recognize everybody.”
Everybody who?
Panthro, Tygra, Cheetara? “All those characters will still be in it” Jelenic promises — and Snarf.
“Everyone always wants to know about Snarf,” he laughed. “He will be in it, and he will not talk. Don’t worry.”
“He won’t be going, ‘Lion-O, why don’t you do this?'” said Jelenic, imitating the character’s familiar whine. “We just having him say, ‘Snarf! Snarf!’ That’s a way to get him in the show without annoying every single person who hates him. It’s funny, because people are always like, ‘I hate Snarf! Wait. you’re not going to put him in? That’s terrible!'”
No word on WilyKat and WilyKit, which is, in my mind, a good sign, as those are two characters we can do without.
But what about the whole “reimagining” thing? Jelenic agreed that the word “reimagining” could mean a lot of things, so he explained one specific change he’s looking to make with the new series.
“One thing is that I tried to simplify the mythology a little bit,” he said. “It’s a pretty complicated backstory that borrows from a lot of other sci-fi stuff, like Superman and Star Wars. In developing this, I wanted it to be a little more simple. In the other version, there’s something like three different planets involved, and they all converge onto one planet, and nobody’s really connected. I just wanted to bring that all together.”
That sounds good to me, as long as we keep the rogue’s gallery fairly consistent. That means, to me at least, Mumm-Ra, Slithe, Jackalman, and Monkian, plus or minus a Vultureman, or some improved version of them if you please. I always liked that the Mutants were the blunt object, while Mumm-Ra got to be puppet-master.
We’ll see Thundercats on CartoonNetwork sometime next year, most likely next Fall. I can’t wait. It will hopefully replace the rather large hole that the loss of Batman: Brave and the Bold is causing me.
No word if Thundercats will have an all-singing episode starring Neil Patrick Harris yet. Stay tuned.