It has been greater than 5 years since Warner Bros. and Adam Wingard (Godzilla vs. Kong, The Visitor) introduced plans to make a live-action movie adaptation of the ’80s traditional cartoon ThunderCats however there’s been little to point out for it. Wingard’s ardour challenge has taken a again seat to blockbuster fare resembling Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire and the upcoming A24 action-thriller Onslaught, however the director gave Polygon a (largely) constructive replace on his ThunderCats challenge this week.
The live-action ThunderCats film just isn’t lifeless, Wingard tells Polygon, and he was engaged on the challenge in earnest earlier this yr.
In an interview with Polygon for Onslaught, Wingard says his ThunderCats film remains to be on his stack of in-development initiatives.
“My profession’s sort of bouncing round, so various things have taken priority,” Wingard says. “However [ThunderCats is] nonetheless kicking round. I feel it is only a matter of discovering time to actually re-concentrate and re-engage with it. We did a brand new draft in the beginning of this yr. It wasn’t too way back, after which issues obtained placed on maintain for this film [Onslaught]. So I do not actually have any thrilling updates.
“Nevertheless it’s not lifeless. It lives. It is simply not the primary [thing] I am engaged on proper now.”
A quick historical past of the ThunderCats film
Wingard and Warner Bros. introduced the ThunderCats film in 2021. On the time, it was described by Deadline as a “big-scale function” movie primarily based on the ThunderCats animated TV sequence. Wingard labored with author Simon Barrett, who wrote or co-wrote the screenplays for Godzilla vs. Kong, The Visitor, and Onslaught, to develop the ThunderCats universe.
On the time, Wingard described ThunderCats as “a dream challenge” and that he wrote a 272-page screenplay in regards to the cartoon in highschool.
“My actual obsession with ThunderCats got here in highschool,” Wingard advised Deadline in 2021, “the top of me deciding I needed to be a filmmaker. […] I truly spent most of my tenth grade yr, I utterly blew it. I didn’t concentrate in class, made horrible grades. And the rationale? I used to be writing my ThunderCats screenplay by way of my complete tenth grade yr. And I used to be hand-writing it. The screenplay itself ended up being 272 pages lengthy. I nonetheless have it. It was a type of issues the place I might carry round my notebooks and speak about it.”
Wingard advised Deadline that his strategy to ThunderCats is to do a “new kind of fantasy sci-fi spectacle movie that folks have by no means seen earlier than.”
He added that he needs his movie to be genuine to ThunderCats‘ retro look. “I wish to do a ThunderCats movie that takes you again to that ’80s aesthetic. I don’t wish to reinvent the way in which they appear; I would like them to appear to be ThunderCats. I don’t wish to do it reside motion, both. I don’t need it to appear to be Cats. […] I wish to do a film you’ve by no means seen earlier than. A hybrid CGI movie that has a hyperreal look and someway bridges the hole between cartoon and CGI.”
Whereas updates on Wingard’s ThunderCats film have been few and much between, the director lately left his deliberate sequel to John Woo’s Face/Off. The truth that Wingard is continuous with ThunderCats is a constructive signal for the film.
There’s one other ThunderCats film
On the Annecy Worldwide Animation Movie Competition in June, Warner Bros. Footage Animation introduced it is growing a separate ThunderCats film, however supplied just about no particulars on who’s hooked up to it or when it is going to be launched. That is excellent news for ThunderCats followers who have not had a brand new sequence since 2020’s ThunderCats Roar aired on Cartoon Community.
Whether or not that animated challenge may have any impression on Wingard’s live-action/CGI hybrid film stays to be seen, however one other challenge may need spooked Warner Bros. extra: the failure of Amazon MGM Studios’ Masters of the Universe, one other big-budget adaptation of an iconic ’80s cartoon traditional.