Looney tunes remake for hbo will not be featuring guns
The beloved Looney Tunes have gotten revamped for being aired on HBO Max. The new production makes use of modern animation technology but still retains the charm of the classic Looney Tunes animation style.
The animated children’s series which was created as a series of short films in the 1930s has found a new home on TV giant: channel HBO, but with a few changes.
HBO released the following statement on their website: “Starring the cherished Looney Tunes characters. Looney Tunes Cartoons echoes the high production value and process of the original Looney Tunes theatrical shorts with a cartoonist-driven approach to storytelling.”
The statement went on to read: “Marquee Looney Tunes characters will be featured in their classic pairings in simple, gag-driven, and visually vibrant stories. The new series from Warner Bros. Animation is comprised of animated shorts that vary in length and include adapted storylines for today’s audience.”
The cartoons began airing on May 27th and viewers noticed a peculiar feature in the new version. The characters of Elmer Fudd and Yosemite Sam look different from the previous version. While their outfits are the same both characters have ditched their trademark accessory: big guns.
Although the characters have not shed their violent nature in the new version and resort to sticks and Acme dynamite to deliver plenty of booms and bangs, the executive producer of the show says “Guns” are out of the picture.
“We are not doing guns,” Peter Browngardt, the show’s executive producer and showrunner commented in an interview with the New York Times.
“But we can do cartoony violence — TNT, the Acme stuff. All that was kind of grandfathered in,” he went on to say.
The never-ending run and chase between the outlandish characters is a stand-out feature of the show. Most of the episodes centered around Elmer Fudd’s characters vain attempts to hunt down the clever Bugs Bunny with a rifle in hand but he mostly ended up hurting himself rather than catching the wily rabbit.
It seems the show creators have taken a step back from the featuring gun violence, however, in the episode titled “Dynamite Dance” Fudd chases after bugs Bunny with a scythe in hand while Bugs Bunny retaliates by using explosives to blow up Fudd multiple times.
The producers made no mention of whether the decision was made in response to increasing gun violence in the US in light of frequent school shooting incidents.
The Looney Tunes story editor Johnny Ryan commented that the series did not always match the messages, kids, today receive.
“We’re going through this wave of anti-bullying, everybody needs to be friends, everybody needs to get along … ‘Looney Tunes’ is pretty much the antithesis of that … Its two characters in conflict, sometimes getting pretty violent,” he said.