Thursday, August 13, 2009

Cartoon Network Does Cartoons

CN slows its slide into the live-action abyss and makes some new 'toons.

Cartoon Network announced greenlights for two new original comedy animated series, Regular Show and Horrorbots, in addition to a picking up more episodes of The Marvelous MisAdventures of Flapjack and additional writing for Adventure Time.

Regular Show is created by J. G. Quintel and was developed as a short for Cartoon Network's Cartoonstitute ... Two bored groundskeepers, Mordecai ... and Rigby ... are best friends who spend their days trying to entertain themselves by any means necessary ...

Horrorbots tells the story of Thrasher and Blastus, two outsider teenage droids who are only slightly less horrific than the ultra-powerful robots that populate their planet, Killglobe. Now they face their greatest challenge yet: high school ...

Back before I flew off to Florida, a Cartoon Network employee told me: "One of the top Turner execs told some people here 'Gee, animation has a long shelf life and is cheaper to do than most of our live action stuff. Maybe CN should be doing more of it.'"

That's why Turner and Time-Warner pays the big bucks to their execs. You smack them in the head with the obvious, and sooner or later they pick up on it. With any luck ... and a few more live action shows going belly up in the ratings ... Cartoon Network might get back to its roots.

I'm informed some other series might sprout from the Cartoonstitute. This would be a good thing, because frankly, CN morphing itself into an under-powered imitation of the Disney Channel is a short-sighted and ultimately self-defeating business model.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

geez....I guess we'll have to be satisfied with Cartoon Network making cartoons instead of GOOD cartoons.

Anonymous said...

One step at a time ...

Unknown said...

I'm overjoyed for the renewal of Flapjack, since it is one of the funniest and most creative shows I've had the pleasure to watch. Easily the best animated series currently on air.

As for the additional episodes of Adventure Time, I've read some of the storyboards and saw an animatic: great stuff! The concept works successfully as a series, and will hopefully be popular.

The Regular Show has a very surreal premise...coming from Flapjack's creative director, its sure to be good though.

Steve Hulett said...

They've also got Firebreathers, a half-hour series, in development.

The pre-production work is in full swing.

Anonymous said...

I know Firebreather is going to be a movie on CN, but has it been greenlit to series?

Dan Thompson said...

Racattack Force: High praise from someone who works on the show itself!

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