On the move, again
GODZILLA Vs Kong director Adam Wingard is attached to helm a computer-animated adaptation of the beloved 1980s Rankin Bass animated series Thundercats for Warner Bros, from a script Wingard will write with frequent collaborator Simon Barrett (You’re Next, The Guest).
Dan Lin of Rideback and Roy Lee of Vertigo, who produced Wingard’s film Death Note, were already attached to produce the film with a script by David Coggeshall when Wingard signed on, but Wingard and Barrett are starting fresh.
The original series, which aired from 1985 to 1989, was revived for a single season on Cartoon Network in 2011, and then again in 2020 under the title Thundercats Roar. But as a feature film, Thundercats has been a tricky project to crack for the studio, which has hired a small parade of screenwriters and producers since at least 2007 to bring a movie to life.
The underlying story is at once relatively simple – a team of humanoid cat-people (or cat-like humans) like Lion-o, Panthro, and Cheetara fight the evil wizard Mumm-ra on the planet of Third Earth – and surprisingly complicated, with a mix of technological space sci-fi and swords-and-sorcery fantasy. There’s the mystical blade that holds the Eye of Thundera and the Ancient Spirits of Evil, and then antagonistic aliens like the Mutants of Plundarr and the Lunataks. In an interview with Deadline, Wingard made clear he is not interested in making a Cats-style live-action version of Thundercats, and wants instead to take a Cgiapproach to the visuals that would embrace the “1980s aesthetic” of the original series.
“I don’t want to reinvent the way they look; I want them to look like Thundercats,” Wingard said. “I want to do a movie you’ve never seen before: A hybrid CGI film that has a hyper-real look and somehow bridges the gap between cartoon and CGI. That’s the starting point.”