‘Animaniacs’: How Hulu Revived Steven Spielberg’s Beloved And Postmodern Looney Tune (2024)

Helloooooo, Hulu!

More than two decades after it first aired, Animaniacs will make its triumphant return this Friday (Nov. 20). It’s a sign of just how much time has passed that the Steven Spielberg-produced series won’t be revived on broadcast television, but on a subscription streaming service: Hulu. Even if the show wanted to return to its original home of the Kids’ WB, it couldn’t — that programming block no longer exists.

“Since you can stream and watch with your family, I think that was definitely the thinking, specifically for Animaniacs. This streaming platform is perfect for this type of thing,” co-executive producer Gabe Swarr said during a recent Zoom interview.

Showrunner and executive producer Wellesley Wild admitted that both he and Swarr originally turned down the opportunity to bring back such a sacred cow (or whatever type of animal the Warner siblings are — if anything knows, email me).

“We were just like, ‘We’re not touching this. This already lives in its own universe. It’s fine the way it is. We don’t wanna be the guys who ruined it.’ One of our stated goals was, ‘Let’s try and make a show that’s worthy of the original,’” Wild explained.

With it various segments and culturally-savvy characters, Animaniacs was a groundbreaking series, a postmodern Looney Tune that was so cognizant of its own existence, that it had no scruples about being set on the actual Warner Bros. backlot. To get all biological on you, it was a more evolved subspecies of the Merry Melodies genus — a perfect example of controlled cartoon chaos for a more cynical world.

MORE FROMFORBES VETTED

This Viral Smart Bassinet Is 30% Off With The Snoo Black Friday SaleByJordan ThomasForbes Staff

Bringing back such a cherished IP meant a return to the heightened version of the WB headquarters in Burbank, where Yakko, Wakko, and Dot cause all sorts of cheeky and fourth wall-breaking bedlam. The iconic characters created by Tom Ruegger had been lying dormant in the famous water tower for more than two decades — it was finally time to wake them up.

But it couldn’t be just anyone to rouse the Warners from their deep slumber. No, it had to be the man who steered the ship last time: Steven Spielberg. Once the mythical director decided to come back as an executive producer, everything fell neatly into place.

“For him to put his giant, well-known John Hancock all over it [tells you something]. He’s very hands-on and that is absolutely the gospel truth,” said Rob Paulsen, voice of Yakko. “To be able to literally know that the ‘King of Hollywood’ has his fingers in it and says, ‘Let’s do more of this.’ Are you kidding me? Yeah! Ok, Steve, whatever you say! It’s pretty cool.”

“He is a hard man to please because he’s so good,” Swarr said of Spielberg. “He’s so amazing and one of the best filmmakers [and] he knows exactly what he wants, visually. With writing, it took time to really gain his trust.”

“The reason he’s such an amazing filmmaker is because he sees things that no one else sees and knows how they’re gonna work on people, whether they know they’re being transformed by these very subtle camera angles or whatever,” Wild added. “He’s a very moving and incredible and meticulous filmmaker and he approached Animaniacs in the same way, so there’s a very high standard in all aspects of the show.”

Of course, Spielberg’s direct involvement meant that the reboot had a license to make light of the celebrated director and his movies. For example, the very first episode of Season 1 opens with a pitch perfect homage to Jurassic Park. See for yourself:

Wild also mentioned that Spielberg “has the most steady vision of what the show and the tone was, is, and should be.” To help bridge the gap between 1998 and 2020, the director insisted on recruit the original voice actors.

“For him, there was never an issue about anything to do with stunt casting,” Paulsen said. “That is to say, ‘Let’s have Peter Dinklage as the Brain and Russell Brand as Pinky.’ That stuff never occurred to Mr. Spielberg. [He said] ‘If we’re gonna do this again, we have four main actors and if those actors want to and they’re able to, they’re in.’”

In the booth, Paulsen was once again joined by Jess Harnell (voice of Wakko), Tress MacNeille (voice of Dot), and Maurice LaMarche (voice of the Brain). For the last 20+ years, these veteran voice actors have lived with their characters at various comic cons and fan events. Their animated personas have never really exited the building so-to-speak, but there was something magical about doing it for real again. Getting a paycheck didn’t hurt either.

“It’s like putting on your favorite leather jacket. It’s like trying on your wedding clothes and finding out that they still fit,” LaMarche said. “It’s great to get together with my dear friend, Rob Paulsen, and actually get paid for playing Pinky and the Brain, rather than just doing it in our basements for our own amusement.”

“We were very, very lucky because we all get to be together again; it’s the very best material and writers and circumstances,” added Tress MacNeille, who also worked on Tiny Toon Adventures, the Spielberg-produced antecedent to Animaniacs.

With such a large gap between the conclusion of the original show and the beginning of the new one, Wild, Swarr, and the writing team had 22 years’ worth of pop culture to catch up on. The charm of Animaniacs was its penchant to satirize anything and everything. No one and nothing was safe from the parody-happy gaze of the Warner siblings who were always close buy to stick out their tongues and say “neener-neener” at the current state of the world...and even its past state, if we’re being realistic.

That said, the reboot had to thing in contemporary terms. The opening theme song couldn’t have Bill Clinton playing the sax anymore — it just wouldn’t work. As Swarr aptly put it, the overall philosophy on the revival was to “make the same show, but do it now. New references. It’s kind of the same container.”

Viewers got a taste of that update in the trailer (see above), which mentions quinoa wraps, Queen Bae, and mansplaining. “We’ve missed so much,” remarks Yakko after swallowing a tablet as though it were a medicinal pill.

“There are the various and sundry homages that we will see and the mentioning of cultural icons and whatnot that are around these days,” said McNeille. “There’s a little political stuff, not much … There are a lot of historical references and so, that remains the same. It’s kind of ‘edumacational,’ but mostly, it’s your wackadoodle hijinks.”

“It’s really easy to go after a great joke that makes you belly laugh, but is it gonna make you laugh 25 years from now? It turns out the genius of the way the show was constructed 25 years ago is borne out because the audience is anxious to hear it again,” Paulsen continued. “Were that not the case, you and I wouldn’t be having this chat because the jokes would’ve been one-note.”

Paulsen also promised that the reboot acknowledges the passage of time right off the bat in the slightly-tweaked opening number. The “It’s time to for Ani-mani-acs” is still there, of course, but “after the first stanza, the lyrics in the opening theme have been changed to acknowledge a passage of time. Right away, in the opening title, the audience gets that the Animaniacs are self-aware,” he teased.

Thanks to his work on Seth MacFarlane projects like Family Guy and American Dad, Wild was the perfect candidate for Animaniacs, which itself feels right at home in a post-Family Guy, post-Deadpool landscape.

“It’s the self-awareness and the parody, the meta humor, the satire, musical numbers,” the showrunner said. “There’s a lot in common, it’s just one is directed solely at adults and one is directed at kids and adults. So, we had to adjust our sights a little bit to aim for that younger audience, that sweet spot. But [Family Guy] was absolutely a great education and primer for Animaniacs.”

Like last time, musical numbers are very much a part of the agenda. With several new countries having gained independence since 1998, there could very well be an updated version of Yakko’s song about the world’s collection of nations.

While it was easy to get back into the groove of voicing Dot, MacNeille forgot how much time went into recording the original songs.

“That is a real process,” she said. “It sure is worth it, though, because you don’t want to hear floppy music. When cartoon shows decide to do music and do songs — their wackadoodle parodies and whatnot — they are perhaps not done as well as Animaniacs has always done.”

And before you ask, the answer is yes: the mature jokes and double entendres are still part of the Animaniacs DNA...up to a point. The infamous “finger Prince” pun, which has turned into an enduring internet meme, is synonymous with the show’s ability to subtly hide adult (and borderline raunchy) entertainment into a show for younger viewers. The cleverness carries over for the reboot, but don’t expect Yakko to say his famous catchphrase: “Helloooooo, Nurse!” Even the Warners have to be a little PC sometimes.

“Because of certain cultural changes in the last 22 years, bringing out ‘Hello nurse!’ wouldn’t fly. We pushed as far as we could up to the limit of standards and practices,” Wild explained. “Knowing that it’s directed primarily at kids, [Hulu was] careful about how far they would let us. But I assure you, we pushed as far as we could.”

“I’m sure that we’re highly sardonic and there might be a couple of references that we make in the new cartoons, but nothing overt and nothing [too over-the-top] that you would have to cover your kids’ ears,” MacNeille added. “Although you might as well give up that fight. No ears will be covered from now, I don’t think. Let no ear be left uncovered!”

“We got away with more than we thought we would back then,” Paulsen said, later adding: “The great thing about guys like Steven Spielberg and Wellesley Wild is that the jokes and lampooning, in my view, err on the side of clever, not vulgar for its own sake.”

LaMarche, however, posits that the revival is “a little edgier” and a reflection of a harsher world in which consumers demand more abrasive animation. He likened Animaniacs 2020 to Adult Swim’s Rick and Morty, which he also does voices for.

“It’s not as fluffy and wholesome, I think, as back in the ‘90s. Wellesley has brought a bit of that edge with his Family Guy and American Dad pedigree. Although the show is still honoring the Animaniacs, he’s brought a little more of an edge to it, and I think the current audience will enjoy it.”

That sense of “edginess” can definitely be felt in the fresh — NARF! — Pinky and the Brain segments. After all these years, the two lab mice are still doing the same thing they do every night: trying to take over the world.

“Brain has been trying to take over the world for 27 years and he still hasn’t succeeded,” LaMarche said. “He’s a little bit pissed off and he’s a little more willing to try things like death rays and that kind of thing.”

“There are both historical references that we didn’t get to in the first batch and real-time issues that Brain co-opts in his failed attempts to take over the world,” promises Paulsen. “The moment he does it, we’ve got no show. So, there are all sorts of things that continue to surprise to me and I think, ‘Why the hell didn’t we do this on the first batch?’ It’s not a slight at our writers, it’s just like, ‘Oh my God, where did this one come from?’ The sky’s the limit.”

Based on the trailer, we know that modern day concepts of catfishing and Instagram likes are now part of the daily routine for Pinky and Brain. But here’s something new: Pinky’s been taking care of his mental well-being these last two decades.

“There’s a wonderful line in the first episode about how Pinky’s been through therapy in the past 27 years and realizes that his whole wanting to help the Brain was based on his co-dependent connection to him. They deal with that in a way as we go forward,” LaMarche said.

On the subject of pushing boundaries, Swarr explained that another goal for the reboot was to bring the visuals “up-to-date” and see how far they could expand on the existing “variety aspect of the show ... we tried a bunch of different takes even with the main style and [Steven] was just like, ‘Let’s try and stick closer to the original.’”

“We went back to the drawing board and really studied the original and figured out what worked — what was the best of the best and that was TMS (Tokyo Movie Shinsha). It was a Japanese studio and I reached out to them and talked to people who specifically worked on that cartoon back in the ‘90s. We leaned into that design for the main look [of the revival] and then went all over the place for everything else. It was the best of both worlds,” he continued.

In its current iteration, the reboot is a little more hyper-focused, content to place the majority of its emphasis on the Warner siblings and Pinky and the Brain. That may come as a disappointment for longtime fans hoping to see characters like Slappy the squirrel, Buttons the dog, the Goodfeathers, and the rest, but chin up, chum — they could turn up eventually...if you stream the show enough.

“Wellesey is not averse to maybe throwing them in a cameo [role] if we get a pickup or something like that,” wagered LaMarche, while promising a supporting roster of “brand-new” characters. “If we’re lucky enough to get a pickup beyond our original 26 episode order, which is being split into two seasons on Hulu, we may see a couple of things return. But it’s not my call to make.”

With an ever-vigilant finger on the thrumming heartbeat of popular culture, Animaniacs is well-suited for reboot territory. The show could realistically be revived every couple of decades to make fun of whatever (and whomever) is hip at the moment. If anything, this year has proved that Steven Spielberg is not done with animation. Over the last several weeks, HBO Max and Cartoon Network announced a reboot of Tiny Toon Adventures, as well as a Freakazoid! crossover with Teen Titans Go!

But why bring all these ‘90s-era properties back now?

“There’s this culture of nostalgia,” Wild explained. “A whole other generation has come of age and now they have kids. Those adults rediscover their favorite childhood shows, they want to introduce them to their kids, and enjoy them all over again. It’s kind of the hoped-for Jurassic Park-Jurassic World phenomenon, where nostalgia helped bridge the gap between the kids and adults.

“Warner Bros. is always open to it, they never stopped making Scooby-Doo! They just have never stopped since 1968,” added Swarr. “I think it’s like, ‘Why wouldn’t they?’”

For Wild, the Animaniacs reboot can represent a port of serenity in the turbulent storm that is 2020. “If anything, the pandemic has people seeking comfort and familiarity since we tend to seek nostalgia in troubling times,” he concluded. “These are very troubling times. We’re hoping that Animaniacs will provide that sort of animated comfort that people need right now.”

Despite the pseudo-apocalyptic nature of recent events, LaMarche wanted to make it clear that his character had absolutely nothing to do with it. “Brain would never come up with this as a plan for world domination,” he said of COVID-19. “It’s just not a good plan: ‘Oh, make people stay at home!’ He’s not that mean.”

Those are the facts. Goodnight, everybody!

Animaniacs premieres on Hulu Friday, Nov. 20.

‘Animaniacs’: How Hulu Revived Steven Spielberg’s Beloved And Postmodern Looney Tune (2024)
Top Articles
Latest Posts
Recommended Articles
Article information

Author: Dean Jakubowski Ret

Last Updated:

Views: 5656

Rating: 5 / 5 (70 voted)

Reviews: 93% of readers found this page helpful

Author information

Name: Dean Jakubowski Ret

Birthday: 1996-05-10

Address: Apt. 425 4346 Santiago Islands, Shariside, AK 38830-1874

Phone: +96313309894162

Job: Legacy Sales Designer

Hobby: Baseball, Wood carving, Candle making, Jigsaw puzzles, Lacemaking, Parkour, Drawing

Introduction: My name is Dean Jakubowski Ret, I am a enthusiastic, friendly, homely, handsome, zealous, brainy, elegant person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.