Warner Bros. announced today their plans to build a franchise on the classic animated series “Tom and Jerry.” The movie, which will be set for the big screen, might copy the 1992 attempt of “Tom and Jerry: The Movie” that wasn’t exactly connected to the original 114 animated shorts written by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera.
According to Variety magazine, the movie will be centered on Tom and Jerry’s first encounter and their conflicts before arriving to Chicago and get lost. In the end, they find themselves working together on their way back home. Yet, maybe no one wanted to know why Tom and Jerry argued in the end so giving a reason for it isn’t exactly what everyone hoped for.
The infinite races throughout the house, while the black lady was chasing Tom and threatened him with a broomstick, and the traps specially built to make one another fall or break something have no charm if there isn’t that hate between them and that constant fight which made them so famous both for the kids and for the adults.
Tom and Jerry debuted on the small screen in the 1940s and they seem to follow the Scooby-Doo franchise, which has lost so much of its cartoon’s charm when it was designed to reach the big screen and replace the characters with real actors. Yet, Scooby-Do and its sequel made at least $457 million at the global box office.
Barbera and Hanna wrote and directed the 114 “Tom and Jerry” cartoons at the MGM cartoon studio in Hollywood, California until the animation unit got closed in 1957. The original series won the Academy Awards for Best Short Subject seven times and became the most awarded animated series.
“Puss Gets the Boot” was the first name given to the cat-and-mouse cartoon. The cat, named Jaspers, was trying to catch the unnamed mouse until the black housemaid Mammy threatened Jaspers of kicking him out of the house. The short was released without fanfare, but the two producers went on to direct other such shorts.
Since 1960, MGM had new short-animations of Tom and Jerry produced by Rembrandt Films and led by Gene Deitch in the Eastern Europe. The production of the famous cartoons returned to Hollywood under Chuck Jones's Sib-Tower 12 Productions in 1963. Until 1967, the series reached to a total of 161 shorts.
Tom and Jerry’s story didn’t end here, as Hanna-Barbera and Filamtion Studios started producing the television cartoons during the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. After the 1992 movie was released, in 2000 there was their first TV special, “Tom and Jerry in: The Mansion Cat,” broadcast by Cartoon Network.
Time Warner is the company which now owns the rights for the Tom and Jerry franchise. They also produce the series “Tom and Jerry Tales” for “The CW4Kids,” which is broadcast by CW on Saturday morning.
