“ThunderCats Ho?” More like ThunderCats go!
Deadline reports that director Adam Wingard is set to co-write and direct a live-action/animated hybrid based on the classic 1980s cartoon series, ThunderCats. His latest film, Godzilla vs. Kong, will be out later this week.
“Nobody on this planet knows or has thought as much about Thundercats as I have,” Wingard said in an interview with Deadline. Reportedly, he is such a fan of the franchise that years after it went off the air, while he was in high school, he hand wrote a 272-page screenplay for a Thundercats movie. A script he still has. So, after Godzilla vs. Kong started to do well, he talked to producers who were in charge the property and things moved on from there.
“I saw this as an opportunity to do a new type of fantasy sci-fi spectacle film that people have never seen before,” he said. “It’s got a rich mythology; the characters are fantastic. The colours. I want to do a Thundercats film that takes you back to that ‘80s aesthetic. I don’t want to reinvent the way they look; I want them to look like Thundercats. I don’t want to do it live action, either. I don’t want it to look like Cats, I don’t want those kinds of issues — no disrespect to that director, whom I don’t mean to throw under the bus any more than everyone else has. 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, and [frequent collaborator] Simon Barrett and I are getting into the script now.”
Wingard and Barrett are also attached to do a sequel to the John Woo film Face/Off and it seems like that would be the next project for the two. Previously, they made the Blair Witch sequel, Blair Witch, You’re Next, The Guest, and Death Note.
There’s no doubt that Wingard has a passion for this and it seems most audiences are enjoying his take on Godzilla vs. Kong. ThunderCats is so different though. It’s almost Avatar-esque, a huge step up from even Godzilla vs. Kong because at least those characters and that world are well-known. We’re cautiously optimistic about this news but if he can pull it off, it would be a incredible triumph.