It’s got to be a little frustrating to be a major movie studio that also owns the Looney Tunes brand. You have to know, given the cultural ubiquity of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and the rest of the franchise’s iconic characters, that there’s gold in them thar box office hills (to paraphrase philosopher-poet Yosemite Sam). And yet—despite successful TV shows, home video projects, and god only knows how much merch and advertising revenue—the only time the franchise has ever produced any kinds of major dividends in theaters in the modern era, it was by resorting to also shoving the biggest athlete on the planet into the mix.
Which isn’t stopping Warner Bros. from taking another stab at it, apparently, with Variety confirming this week that Looney Tunes movie The Day The Earth Blew Up, originally conceived as a streaming offering, is now heading to theaters. Amazingly, that makes the film—from Pete Browngardt and the team that worked on his Looney Tunes Cartoons series for then-HBO Max—the very first theatrical Looney Tunes movie to ever be done entirely in original animation. (Both Space Jams, and infamous 2003 flop Back In Action, incorporated heavy live-action elements, while the Looney Tunes movies that hit theaters in the 1970s and ’80s were compilations of pre-existing shorts.) It wasn’t always going to be like this: The Day The Earth Blew Up was originally announced as an HBO Max exclusive, back when that was a thing Warner Bros. was still interested in making. Unlike movies like Batgirl or the also-animated Scoob! sequel, though, TDTEBU was apparently interesting enough to get bumped up to a theatrical release, instead of getting dumped in the woodchipper. (Something that also happened to Blue Beetle, by the by.)
Browngardt’s team picked up a fair amount of praise when they launched Looney Tunes Cartoons in 2020, ultimately releasing three seasons of shorts that served as a deliberate return to a classic, chaotic Tunes style, after a few years of stylistic deviations. The new film is described as a buddy comedy centered on Daffy Duck and Porky Pig, who must save the Earth from, well… You can probably guess. No word on when the film can be expected in theaters, but Warner Bros. apparently just picked up a distribution partner in GFM Animation, ensuring the film will in fact launch in theaters around the planet.