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Toon Zone News Archives |
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| April
2001 |
Extra!
Extra! Completely Honest and True and Un-Made-Up Updates Concerning
the Future of Life, the Universe, and Warner Animation-Related Stuff!
The ToonZone Staff
Sun., Apr. 1, 2001
In this issue:
Warner
Bros. Animation on the Rebound
Updates
on the Kids' WB! Fall Schedule
Production
Started on 'Iron Giant 3'
Budget
Cuts Can't Keep 'Max Steel' Down
ToonZone
'Teams Up' With the XFL!
Warner
Bros. Animation on the Rebound
Warner Bros. Animation has been going through some turbulent times
lately, with cutbacks, budget cuts, turnovers in several high-up positions
in the company, and record numbers of cherry bombs flushed down the
office toilets. The latest news is that the elections for president
were apparently rigged--when the final recounts were turned in from
the storyboard offices, it turned out that presumed victor Sander
Schwartz had lost by 5.3 votes, to Yefim L. Hallgrimsdottir.
"Mr. Hallgrimsdottir is a visionary…he's a genius…he's a ranting lunatic
we pulled off the street who thinks he's Otto Von Bismarck," said
Jean MacCurdy, the current president of WBA. "We think he'll bring
some bold new ideas to our studio. We have great confidence in him."
Indeed, the first series proposed by Hallgrimsdottir are some of the
most inventively derivative ideas to be proposed anywhere in over
three months, and may be just what the studio needs to get back on
its feet. Among them:
- Footman - A dramatic series focusing not only on the
great hero's crimefighting capers and never ending struggle against
chewed gum lying on the ground, but also on his personal life.
The tragic story of his battle with athlete's foot, and the collapse
of his marriage to the only woman he ever loved, are related in
truly poignant and uncompromising style. One to watch with the
whole family.
- Tiny Toon Adventures: The Next Generation - A wildly
original effort, as we see our favorite Tiny Toons, now all grown-up
and teachers at Acme Looniversity, teaching a whole new generation
of Toonsters! The colorfully inventive, irreverently fresh new
cast of Toons includes Bud, the wiseacre bunny; Pluffy, the egotistical
duck; and Fizzy, the spinning Tasmanian devil.
- The Sylvester & Tweety Checkout Line Adventures - That
wacky cat and bird team are at it again! Following such successful
series as The Sylvester & Tweety Mysteries, The Sylvester
& Tweety Westerns, The Sylvester & Tweety Hot-Rod Escapades,
The Sylvester & Tweety Rock 'n' Roll Experience, The
Sylvester & Tweety Post-Apocalyptic Epic, and the exceptionally
popular miniseries Sylvester & Tweety Meet the Awesome Apparitions.
This time out, our brilliant executives have managed to put yet
another fresh new spin on the classic duo, as they take a job
working at a supermarket, and experience the ups and downs of
operating a cash register! Price checks are muddled! The receipt
printer jams! A shifty customer tries to sneak 4.3 lbs. of rutabagas
by for the price of 4 lbs.! General hilarity ensues.
- Following the moderately acceptable success of WBA's latest
series, The Zeta Project, a glut of Batman Beyond
spinoffs have been ordered! Among them are The Wild 'n' Wooly
Willie Watt Chronicles, The Life & Times of That Kid Who
Lived in the Sewer With the Rats, and The Further Adventures
of That Security Guard Who Had an Incidental Appearance in the
Thirty-Seventh Episode of 'Batman Beyond' (tentative title).
Some have speculated that WBA is currently operating on a shoestring
budget, and that the radical number of series proposed by Hallgrimsdottir
is impractical and downright silly. However, he feels that they'll
be able to overcome the financial problems, by taking some creative
routes, never before tried in the field of animation. For instance,
the upcoming Fireball-Eating Tazer-Firing Galaxy-Juggling Star-Blasting
Universe-Conquering Bad Tie-Wearing Stock Brokers From the Dark Side
of the Moon is the first animated series to be done entirely with
shaving cream on cardboard.
When asked about his rather unorthodox methods, Hallgrimsdottir replied,
"Mein Gott! The great questions of the day will not be settled by
press interviews and board meetings, but by blood and iron!" A WB
PR woman claims that by "blood and iron," Mr. Hallgrimsdottir meant
"bold new visual styles and sharp, clever writing."
Updates
on the Kids' WB! Fall Schedule
Reliable sources have informed us that Men in Black has *NOT*
departed the Kids' WB! lineup for good, as had been previously announced.
"The show is still a big ratings grabber for us…it'd be plain silly
to can it!" said a WB spokesperson. He went on to say that the show
will be returning midseason, as part of The All-New Men in Black
/ Calamity Jane Adventures. "The retooling of the Calamity
Jane series has taken a bit longer than originally planned," said
our spokesperson. "We had some trouble communicating with the French-Canadian
animators. We'd say something like, 'Why don't you give her a really
neat-looking, merchandisable car?' and they'd send back footage of
her riding on a gigantic crepe suzette. But we think we've got it
now."
More updates on the Kids' WB! fall schedule: the execs are so positively
tickled pink by the Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century series
that they've already ordered several more futuristic interpretations
of literary classics. Among them: Call of the Wild 2500, with
Jack Thornton riding his space sled, pulled by the daring robotic
part-dog part-wolf Buck, to the gold rush on Pluto; An Elysium
Martian in George W. Bush's Court, in which a Martian laser builder
is conked on the head and awakens in 21st-century America; and a futuristic
adaptation of Around the World in 80 Days. According to network
chief executive Jaime Kellner, the Around the World series
has been experiencing some difficulties. "It takes place in the 24th
century," he explains, "By which time they can travel faster than
the speed of light. So, basically, the journey around the universe
takes about two seconds, and then they're done. You can see the difficulty
in filling out a thirteen-episode series."
With Histeria! leaving the network this coming season, Kellner
and his cronies have been dashing to find some new source of educational
programming. They hit the jackpot when they purchased the scripts
to several unproduced FOX reality specials. They will be adapting
the scripts into animated form, and producing a six-day-a-week E/I
series, tentatively titled Looky That!: A Smart-Making Show.
Scheduled episodes include "When Hairdressers Attack," "When Umbrellas
Malfunction," "When Lighting Fixtures Fall on People's Heads," "When
Good Wigs Go Bad," and "World's Most Entertaining Paper Cut Accidents
IV."
Finally, a midseason replacement entitled Los Bestias de las Calzoncillas
has been ordered. A dubbed Spanish import, the show revolves around
a young boy named Asbesto, who seeks to become a master of the Bestias.
To achieve this, he must hunt down all of the creatures, who look
like ugly little pińatas, and smash them open. The execs have their
hopes pinned on this one, having ordered an unprecedented 540 episodes
for the first season. Look for it to debut sometime around November
sweeps.
Also expect to see in first-quarter 2002: Oz: The Animated Series,
an adaptation of the acclaimed HBO series, the result of Warners'
increasing efforts to cross-promote between networks; and The Brand-Spankin'
New Mr. T Adventures, with the quasi-celebrity's long-overdue
return to the world of Saturday morning animation!
Production
Started on 'Iron Giant 3'
Inspired by the success of the recent rash of direct-to-video sequels
to classic Disney films, and despite the disastrous flop of the little
known Iron Giant 2, a third installation in the series has
been greenlighted for summer 2002, Iron Giant 3: Hogarth to the
Rescue.
As the film opens, we find Hogarth (voiced by Mark Slaughter) a depressed
middle-aged NASA employee, who finds his only pleasure in life through
his work. One day, after a particularly unpleasant fight with his
girlfriend and coworker (voiced by Jodie Foster), he drags himself
into work, to find an unidentified flying object identified crashing
through the Earth's atmosphere.
It lands in Washington, D.C., and he soon contacts it, to find that
it's the Iron Giant, who has returned from the furthest reaches of
the galaxy, to recruit help for an intergalactic space war currently
being fought against a race of large-eyed green aliens from the Holst
Nebula. Hogarth, now a stiff-collared by-the-book adult, has put the
fancy of his young life behind him, and isn't pleased by this reminder
of his previous existence. However, his girlfriend, wanting him to
be "the adventurous li'l spud I used to know," encourages him to go
with the Giant.
Meanwhile, some of the Holstian troops have followed the Iron Giant
to Earth. Kent Mansley, now the first certifiably insane Vice President
in the history of the United States, catches wind of things, and manages
to use his sole power of casting the tie-breaking vote in Senate to
join forces with the Holstians in order to get revenge on the Giant
for their last encounter. He winds up with his finger on a button
to blow up the world.
As for whether or not he does actually blow up the world, our source
refuses to spoil the ending for us. "I'm not saying whether or not
he does destroy the Earth," said our source, who wishes to be known
as anything but Vin Diesel. "However, the film does end with a really
neat homage to the final scene of Dr. Strangelove, where all
the nuclear weapons go off and destroy the Earth, and--oh, &$*%."
Stay tooned for more info!
Budget
Cuts Can't Keep 'Max Steel' Down
A fly on the wall at Sony has informed us that the budget for Max
Steel has once again been sliced by the corporate saber. "The
budget for the third season was supposed to be $50," he / she / it
explains. "That's why they had to downgrade to 2-D animation. The
plan was to buy several dozen pads of drawing paper on discount at
the local supermarket…they figured that if they used the front and
back of each sheet, they'd be able to create little flipbooks that
they could film at a rate of approximately one drawing per ten seconds.
Which still produced a very high-quality product, when compared with
many other Saturday morning series of today."
However, things took a turn for the worse. The budget was again reduced,
without warning, to $5.00, fifty cents' worth of dot-com stock, a
few bluish-colored pennies, and a small bag of Jolly Ranchers™. The
Jolly Ranchers™ devoured, the producers searched for a solution to
their problem. They finally found it: the third season will be produced
entirely in one-dimensional animation!
"I think the high-tech animation utilized in the first two seasons
was holding them back," explained our fly. "I don't think they were
truly able to express themselves in the medium. It's really evident
in these latest episodes that they've finally come to their own. This
is definitely their most thrilling work yet."
Here, we see a sample:
In this still from the season premiere, we see Max fighting the evil
villain Psycho. They are against an exotic Caribbean backdrop, and
Max is driving an off-green motorboat with spiffy purple stripes,
and a streamlined sleek design, for maximum speed. Psycho is firing
a high-powered laser-doodad, and some of those shots are coming awfully
close to his head! He'd be doomed is he wasn't doing it the Max Steel
Way! But thankfully…he is.
Toon
Zone 'Teams Up' With The XFL!
That's right, Toon Zone has partnered with the great Vince McMahon
to become the official home of KidsWB's newest animated series, "XFL:Evolution"!
Check out the official press-release for details!
* XFL:EVOLUTION continues the Kids' WB! tradition of providing audiences
with action, adventure, and extreme sports in this top-notch series
from the mind of Vincent McMahon. Each episode will feature young
Vince as the idealistic teenage coach of a Top-Secret highschool football
team. His ragtag gang of outcast mutants goes up against big-league
NFL players by night and copes with 10th Grade angst by day. Kids'
WB! has ordered 26 all new episodes from DIC Animation to air in the
Fall 2002 season.
"We've teamed up with the talented people of Toon Zone to provide
weekly play-by-play coverage of each new upcoming episode. When we
approached them for the job, they couldn't contain their excitement.
As one of the leading Sports Websites, we're confident in their ability
to develop quality content for fans who 'Toon' in to 'N-Zone' antics,"
said Mano Destra of KWB Public Relations.
Unfortunately, the move caused some degree of friction among the Toon
Zone staff, when several members protested the idea. We've gathered
the following quotes:
"What the heck is going on? They told me we were covering 'BattleBots:TAS',
and now we're doing this instead?"
"I am absolutely outraged by this cheapening of our fair site! This
is outright sacrilege! They're selling out for a few measly bucks!
Is that all this site is worth to everyone?! And, umm... would this
mean that I get a raise?"
"XFL? Who's dumb idea was this? The XFL's entire viewership could
fit in the back of my Hyundai!"
One anonymous staffer even threatened to quit. But what do the fans
think? Do they really want to see coverage of a football cartoon on
this site? How do they view this landmark move for Toon Zone and Kids'
WB!? The opinions were mixed. Here's what they had to say:
"Finally, sports for cartoon lovers!"
--Moe Maragiola
"More realistic than the real thing!"
--Jim Jarmack
"This is how all sports should be! Fox's NASCAR toon was just way
ahead of it's time!"
--Bob "The Destroyer" Blosky
"When you combine my two passions in life, cheerleaders and cartoon
babes, you know it's a recipe for success in my book!"
--Random Usenet Guy
"At first I was skeptical about how well it would translate to animation,
but after the first glimpse of the commercial, I knew I'd be salivating
for the day it arrived on a special edition DVD!"
--James Syde
"What happened to the 'BattleBots:TAS' cartoon they said was coming?"
--Angry Man Who Eats Nails
Despite the odds, we at Toon Zone are confident in our choice to back
this venture into quality animated programming. We will continue to
provide breaking news on this exciting event as it unfolds!
Credits:
Warner Bros. Animation on the Rebound - Craig
Updates on the Kids' WB! Fall Schedule - Craig
Production Started on 'Iron Giant 3' - Romey & Craig
Budget Cuts Can't Keep 'Max Steel' Down - Harley & Craig
Toon Zone 'Teams Up' With the XFL! - Romey
These April Fool's News items have been brought to you courtesy of
Branimaniacs. Eat Branimaniacs for that get-up-and-go feeling!
Assistant to Mr. Marinaro: Mr. Coffee
Romey Appears Courtesy of: The College Formerly Known as Waste Policy
Institute
Brian Cruz Disappears Courtesy of: Acme Vanishing Creme, Patent Pending
Please deposit all trash in the receptacles on the way out. Soundtrack
available on Capital Records. Thanks for joining us! It has been our
pleasure, and we hope to see you again soon. Except that guy in the
fifth row who kept coughing rudely through the whole bleeding thing.
We have no use for him.
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