HARE TODAY, GUN TOMORROW

Elmer Fudd has retired his rifle for HBO Max’s Looney Tunes Cartoons, a reboot of the classic Warner Bros. series.

According to the New York Times, Fudd will no longer brandish his cartoon rifle against his foe Bugs Bunny, a modification in response to U.S. gun violence.

In one short, Dynamite Dance, Elmer Fudd instead wields a scythe, an attack stopped by the hare who jams a stick of lit dynamite into Elmer’s mouth.

“We’re not doing guns,” Peter Browngardt, the series executive producer and showrunner said. “But we can do cartoony violence — TNT, the Acme stuff.”

Browngardt vowed to re-create the original feel of the classic cartoons.

“I always thought, ‘What if Warner Bros. had never stopped making Looney Tunes cartoons?’ As much as we possibly could, we treated the production in that way.”