The current state of media is chaotic, to say the least. Audiences aren’t going to as many films as before due to streaming, but streaming is not as sustainable in terms of being a new pillar for profit as studios had hoped with so much spent trying to maintain them. Studios are losing more money due to banking on blockbusters and overspending on too many projects. The tax write-offs at Warner Bros highlight the issues more than anything since they were done not out of consideration for the media being thrown out, but simply to shave costs even if it doesn’t even make a single dent in the debts created by poor hindsight and management. There is one film, however, that has managed to evade every pothole in front of it and will be coming out soon and the fact that a film like this will be released into theaters is no short of a miracle.

The Day the Earth Blew Up is the first ever fully animated theatrical Looney Tunes film in the almost 90-year history of the franchise. The other films, the two Space Jam’s and the underrated Looney Tunes: Back in Action, were both hybrid films with animation being placed into live action and usually had the issue of the studio forcing trendy elements that didn’t gel with the characters. This movie is a full-blown hand-drawn film made for theaters focusing on the characters without any celebrity being forced in and taking attention away. It follows Daffy and Porky who are adoptive brothers that have to find a job to fix their home or face eviction. They end up finding work at a gum factory but uncover a conspiracy involving aliens and mind control. With the help of gum tester Petunia Pig, the two are now the only hope of humanity against a bizarre threat. So, as you can imagine, this is about as wild of a premise as you would expect from these characters. Taking a mundane situation and escalating it to something insane is the MO for the Looney Tunes and it’s great that this film is taking that route.

The film is a finale to the recent Looney Tunes project, Looney Tunes Cartoons, which was headed by Pete Browngardt, the creator of the Cartoon Network show Uncle Grandpa. It was made as a return to basics for the franchise with 7-minute slapstick shorts and is arguably the best material the characters have starred in since the original shorts. Unfortunately, the series found itself at the wrong place at the wrong time as it was released during the tumultuous AT&T merger and the Discovery buyout of WB as well as COVID and the pivot to streaming in Hollywood. This resulted in the shorts being shoved into HBO Max to fade into the background with the rest of the content on the platform. As a result, it didn’t get a chance to spread its wings and gain an audience. It doesn’t help that the studio limited what characters could be used and a bunch of finished shorts were pulled and thrown into the vault due to being considered “too extreme”.

The film was initially intended for HBO Max, but got stuck in limbo due to the shifting priorities of Warner Bros. Most other projects greenlit under the AT&T tenure at Warner Bros for streaming were either canceled quietly or, in the case of the infamous Coyote vs Acme, written off by the Discovery heads. Warner initially held off on scrapping the film due to its lower budget, but it came close to being canned multiple times until the small-scale distributor Ketchup Entertainment picked it up last year. At this point, the fact that it is getting a release at all is extremely lucky given the state of similar projects in the industry.

What excites me the most about this film is that it is a cartoonist-driven hand-drawn film. This isn’t something that was made on the cheap or for Direct-to-Video, but a film with a high level of quality in its animation and we never see something like this at least in America. For the past two decades, Hollywood has pivoted the animation industry to focus on CGI for movies and cheaper hand-drawn options for Television. While the excuse was driven by the rise of Pixar and DreamWorks and the decline in Box Office for Disney in the early 2000s, it’s apparent that CGI has been adopted because it’s easier to make changes compared to the multi-layered process of 2D animation. Films like Zootopia and Frozen 2 were either heavily overhauled deep into production or had constant changes throughout development. Because of the production pipeline of CGI films, making these changes is much easier so studios see it as the better option in terms of control and perceived marketability. Not to mention how even with Television Animation that still uses 2D, studios tend to outsource it more often than not and at a tighter deadline meaning that fluidity is limited. So, to see a high-quality hand-drawn film not only be released into theaters but feature arguably some of the greatest classic cartoon characters feels like something tailormade for lovers of the medium.

I have loved these characters and their shorts for so long and I’m extremely happy to see that they are finally getting a film worthy of their history and strengths. Too many Looney Tunes projects try to put the characters into a mold they don’t fit in and are spearheaded by studio heads rather than cartoonists or animators. The freedom of creation the original team at WB had with the shorts was what made them influential and funny, but it doesn’t escape me how even back then, the studio was dismissive of their work. At this moment, Browngardt has left Warner Bros, and the studio is slated to get a “new plan” for the Looney Tunes rolled out by the end of the decade. Given both the history of how Warner has developed Looney Tunes projects after the original shorts and the recent Coyote Vs. Acme debacle, I really can’t say I have any trust in an authentic and engaging approach. The fact that the Looney Tunes characters have lost their relevancy as of late is the fault of WB not being willing to make more projects true to their identity and instead either use them to chase trends or as flat mascots. This film and the series it was connected to was the closest we’ve gotten to the spirit of the original shorts, and WB just threw it out because it was made under a different administration. The fact that this film and Coyote were just tossed out tells me that WB doesn’t care to give these characters the respect they truly deserve. If that’s the case, I’m just glad that I get to see this film and that it got made in the way it did.

The Day the Earth Blew Up will be released in theaters on February 28.