Yesterday, I began the tale of Little Go Beep, the theatrical Looney Tune I wrote. Yes, it was meant to be shown in theaters, but it didn’t start out that way.

Kathleen Helppie, who was the head of the Warner Bros. Classic Animation division had wanted to do a Baby Looney Tunes project for some time. She had put together a pitch for a series of educational videos, but they never got off the ground.

Finally, Warner Bros. Consumer Products, who was eager to promote the Baby Looney licensees, agreed to do a project. What we decided on was very different than the educational videos Kathleen had originally wanted to do. This was going to be a single feature-length direct-to-video, made up of classically styled brand-new Baby Looney shorts, with the adult characters, also in new animation, providing the wraparounds. These were to be Baby Looney Tunes done with slaptick and humor in the Looney Tunes tradition.

I began writing. Three directors, Spike Brandt, Gary Hartle and Kirk Tingblad, were lined up, to each takes sections of the videos. Since they were shorts, each director would be able to do complete shorts on their own. I had finished writing the Baby Road Runner and Coyote, and a Baby Bugs with Yosemite Sam and was halfway through a Baby Tweety and Sylvester (we were going to have Granny as a younger girl), when the plug got pulled. Consumer Products didn’t want to foot the cost of the project and Kathleen couldn’t raise the money anywhere else. It seemed like that was the end.

Tomorrow, how a full-length video ended up as a theatrical short. Stay tuned and stay Looney!

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 21st, 2006 at 3:47 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.