previous page
TOC
TV/Streaming
Thoroughly Modern Hanna-Barbera Toons Carl Greenblatt and his team had a lot of fun bringing classic Saturday Morning cartoons back to life in Warner Bros. Animation’s Jellystone! By Ramin Zahed
H
ey, hey, hey! This summer, Yogi and many of his pals from the Golden Age of Hanna-Barbera cartoons are poised to win over a new generation of fans on HBO Max. The green tie-wearing brown bear with a healthy appetite is only one of the stars of the lively new Warner Bros. Animation series Jellystone! He is joined by the likes of Boo Boo, Snagglepuss, Huckleberry Hound, Jabberjaw, Magilla Gorilla, Augie Doggie and Top Cat, all of which have been popular with animation fans for more than seven decades. “These characters are animation royalty and you can’t really find anyone who doesn’t have some love for a least one of them,” says the show’s exec producer Carl Greenblatt, who also created Chowder and Harvey Beaks and has worked on hits such as SpongeBob SquarePants, Fish Hooks and The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy. “There’s something very universal and endearing about these characters, and to get to play with them has been a dream job.” Greenblatt, who also voices Doggie Daddy, Grape Ape, Boo Boo, Peter Potamus and several
‘It’s kind of nerve-wracking to take on characters that are so important to many people. But it’s wonderful to feel that you’ve done right by them.’ — Show creator and exec producer Carl Greenblatt
other of Jellystone Park’s memorable residents, says he re-watched many of the classic cartoons to prepare for his plum assignment. “It was important for us to know what worked and which parts were worth keeping in those shows,” he explains. “We also needed to add more personality and depth to some of the lesser-known characters. Of course, when you have strong main characters like Yogi or Top Cat, we just have to re-imagine them in this world.”
Females of the Species One of the show’s improvements over the classic versions is the addition of strong and important female characters. “We felt that the original shows were missing main female characters,” points out Greenblatt. “Even as side characters, they didn’t get to be funny or
much fun. That wasn’t cool, and all of us felt that we had to fix that. So we changed some of the characters in cases that made sense, for example Augie Doggie is now a helicopter dad who loves his daughter very much. Jabberjaw and Squiddly Diddly are girls and Baba Looey is now Bobbie Louise. We felt like our world is more balanced now.” Greenblatt and his team also wanted to add more personality and depth to some of the lesser-known characters in the HB library. “We all know that these shows had some awesome visual designs and great voices, but some of them didn’t have a lot of depth,” he mentions. “So the goal was to make those characters more well-rounded and funnier. We needed them to be more than one-note jokes to appeal to modern comedy sensibilities.”
www.animationmagazine.net 26
TOC
august 21
previous page
