Animaniacs’ producers shared what they think their audience is with the reboot. Executive producer Wellesley Wild and Gabe Swar sat down with Collider to talk about getting the beloved 90s series update off the ground. One of the keys to Animaniacs from the word go is both parents and children being able to enjoy the humor at different levels. Wild actually thought that tack was the perfect one to take when rebooting a property like this one. It’s no secret that the original show, Freakazoid, and things like Pinky and the Brain were just trying to get as close to the line as possible at times. While this reboot benefits from being on streaming, it’s still a kids’ show, so there’s a delicate balancing act at play. It was important to remember that along the way during the making of Animaniacs.
“I think we just wanted to follow the makeup of the audience of the original, and hoping for that magic Jurassic World phenomenon, where the parents of the kids now came of age since the original Jurassic Park, and now they have kids. We’re hoping that the same thing happens with Animaniacs, but I think the stories would appeal to everyone and the humor works on adult and the kid level, the way the original episodes did. And more specifically, I think the kids enjoy the slapstick and bucking authority, and the adults, which, I think, made up maybe 25 percent or something of the original audience, they’ll hopefully gravitate towards the more sophisticated send-ups like you were just referring to from the cultural canon, which they did in the original as well.”
In Comicbook.com’s interview with Maurice LaMarche and the rest of the cast. Everyone wanted to make sure this thing got done right.
I’m the cynic of the group,” LaMarche laughed. “I always said if they bring it back, they’ll do a bunch of celebrity stunt casting. Peter Dinklage will play the Brain, Russell Brand will play Pinky. It renewed my faith in humanity, and certainly in Steven Spielberg, which I never lost of course, but Steven pitched the show, saying nobody else can play the characters except for our original voices.”
“Anytime you have the king of Hollywood going to bat for you? I mean, come on!” Rob Paulsen chimed in. “But no, I think we had so many well meaning fans who would give us this wonderful compliment about how ‘You should come back, you should come back.’ [We said], respectfully, that’s not our call. That’s not our 20 or 50 million bucks. But when the right guy — namely Mr. Spielberg — says yeah, I think we’ve got to do this, Sam Register made it happen, the Warner Bros. animation chief, and obviously Hulu. And moreover, Mr. Spielberg was so integral to the process. He went to every pitch. This wasn’t just like, ‘Yeah, let’s make a cartoon.’ He went to every pitch, made sure the folks at Hulu, Netflix, Apple, and Amazon, knew that Steven Spielberg was on board, and here we are.”
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