'The Day the Earth Blew Up' Looney Tunes Movie Is Alive And Going Theatrical
That’s another of the August 2022 HBO Max-abandoned projects accounted for
It’s not often nowadays you see a TV movie go theatrical, especially as the lines blur in the age of streaming. But somehow, The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie is making the jump, or at least, that’s the intention. And it’s certainly good to hear about it at all again.
GFM Animation has launched worldwide sales on the Warner Bros. Animation-produced film at the American Film Market, which began Tuesday and will share first-look footage. The event runs through Sunday, November 5. Once intended for Cartoon Network’s ACME Night and what is now Max, The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie is now going to be the first-ever fully animated Looney Tunes feature-length movie created for a movie theater audience.
That’s a lot of qualifiers, sure, but with the franchise’s long history where Porky Pig is hitting 90 soon, there’s all sorts of methods by which Looney Tunes has been distributed. On the film side, there’s the compilation films Bugs Bunny: Superstar, The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Movie, The Looney Looney Looney Bugs Bunny Movie, Bugs Bunny's 3rd Movie: 1001 Rabbit Tales, Daffy Duck's Fantastic Island, Daffy Duck’s Quackbusters, and The Looney Tunes Hall of Fame. There’s the trio of hybrids: Space Jam, Looney Tunes: Back In Action, and Space Jam: A New Legacy and then there’s the direct-to-video films: Tweety's High-Flying Adventure, Bah, Humduck! A Looney Tunes Christmas, Looney Tunes: Rabbits Run, and the much more recent King Tweety and Taz: Quest for Burger.
The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie is written by Kevin Costello, done by the highly successful team at Looney Tunes Cartoons, with series developer Pete Browngardt directing the movie. This buddy comedy stars oft-paired Porky Pig and Daffy Duck (voiced by Bob Bergen and Eric Bauza) as unlikely heroes as Earth’s only hope when facing the threat of alien invasion, racing to save the world. The Day the Earth Blew Up promises all the laugh-out-loud gags and vibrant visuals that have never been done on this epic a scale before.
The film has already been on quite the journey. It was originally announced in September 2021 for, as previously mentioned, Cartoon Network’s ACME Night and Max, with two of the projects it would later be dropped with: Did I Do That To The Holidays: A Steve Urkel Story, now known as Urkel Saves Santa: The Movie! and Merry Little Batman. In August 2022, the new Warner Bros. Discovery regime halted development on them, Batman: Caped Crusader, The Amazing World of Gumball: The Movie, and a second Looney Tunes film, Bye Bye Bunny: A Looney Tunes Musical, forcing all of them to be shopped. Caped Crusader was first to land a new home in March, Prime Video, followed by Merry Little Batman in April. It recently got a December 8 premiere date and its pickup was announced with a spin-off series called Bat-Family. By Annecy Film Festival in June, The Day the Earth Blew Up had apparently been renamed Looney Tunes: Bubble Brains, but has since reverted back. Delivery is currently set for second quarter of 2024.
Sam Register, who executive produces the film by way of being the president of Warner Bros. Animation and Cartoon Network Studios, said: “Our artists have created an incredible Looney Tunes film that follows in the cinematic tradition of when audiences first fell in love with these characters. GFM Animation are the perfect partners to help us bring Porky and Daffy back to their rightful place on the big screen.”
Guy Collins, chairman of GFM Animation, meanwhile remarked: “It’s thrilling for the team here at GFM Animation to be handling the worldwide distribution sales on a movie with such an iconic IP, working with the terrific team at Warner Bros. Animation. It is great to see all their hard work in progress at this advanced stage of production. Independents rarely get to work on movies with such affinity awareness from fans worldwide and we know they are going to love Porky and Daffy’s sci-fi adventure just as much as we do.”
Source: Variety