Irrelevant franchises

Anonus

DreamWorks Animation says they're going to take a $57 million write-down on Mr. Peabody & Sherman. This will make three of their last four movies to lose money at the theatrical market (the other two to do so were Rise of the Guardian and Turbo - I share your pain, Tre, though at least you got your continuation series).

I'm wondering two things: why is the viability of any classic cartoon character who isn't owned by Disney so...low nowadays? (Seriously, you never even see merchandise of the LOONEY TUNES characters anymore and when the cartoons themselves air on TV it's considered a special thing) And why do attempts at "reinvigorating" long dead franchises tend to fail so much?

Obā-san

'cuz nobody wants to see old things that were done better before

lee4hmz

In LT/MM's case, it's because Saturday morning (The Bugs Bunny Show's longtime berth) died on everyone, and because Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon pretty much own all the other timeslots (and neither has run classic cartoons regularly in years). 

I'd imagine things are even worse for most of the Classic Media characters; aside from the Rocky & Bullwinkle and possibly some of the Filmation bodies of work, most of them have been missing in action for decades and no one really gets them anymore.

Anonus

Well, true

They tend to BOTCH these so much (e.g. the in-name-only Underdog movie that existed because for whatever reason Disney saw fit to license the IP from Classic Media)

I just think that classic non-Mickey Mouse-and-friends cartoon characters kinda get a raw deal these days

though personally, I fully expect the Minions from Despicable Me to disappear within five years and will be happy when this transpires

Anonus

lee4hmz said:

I'd imagine things are even worse for most of the Classic Media characters; aside from the Rocky & Bullwinkle and possibly some of the Filmation bodies of work, most of them have been missing in action for decades and no one really gets them anymore.

Peabody and Sherman do hail from R&B

And honestly, most of Classic Media's characters aren't worth bringing back; if they were, they would have been subsumed into media titans ages ago

Anonus

(Even DWA, the closest thing to a media titan that has ever owned most of these characters, doesn't seem to know what to do with them; guess which Harvey Comics character they want to bring back? Not Casper, not Richie Rich, not even Baby Huey. It's Hot Stuff.)

lee4hmz

Yeah. Most of it is "this was only mildly funny 50 years ago and would almost certainly piss off Tumblr too much to be worth bringing back now" stuff like Mr. Magoo and, well, practically all of the Harveytoons. The Rankin/Bass library (which they don't even hold all of) is mostly Christmas specials, and those are too sacrosanct to revamp now (though R/B themselves sure tried back in the 1970s!)

lee4hmz

I've never even heard of Hot Stuff. (And I see why now...1950s Harveytoons haven't been rerun in ages.)

Anonus

And the rights to Rudolph and Frosty are held by the estates of their creators, not DWA or Time Warner...

Classic Media just seems like it was a bad idea in general. They own a handful of relevant properties, and it's usually odd ones out like Where's Waldo (yes, DreamWorks owns that now), VeggieTales, and Olivia...

lee4hmz

Yeah. It's the same "OWN ALL THE THINGS" mentality a lot of conglomerates had back in the 1970s and 1980s, though to different ends; the conglomerates thought they could get a certain amount of vertical integration out of their purchases (good luck with that, tomato company that also owns a car rental service and a speaker manufacturer, among many other things), and Classic Media thinks it can breathe new life into forgotten characters. 

I guess they're thinking they can somehow come across a Who Framed Roger Rabbit, a technical tour de force that also ends up introducing a lot of classic characters to a new audience. But they're doing it the wrong way, i.e. "HAY GUYS LET'S MAKE ANOTHER SHREK SEQUEL AND PUT CM CHARS IN"

Anonus

I doubt DWA is dumb enough to consider that...also, trying to shove DreamWorks Classics characters into Shrek would just be hilariously point-missing (it is sad though that Shrek ended up embodying that corporate franchise mentality it was skewering)