Screen Rant » thundercats

A Look at the Delayed Thundercats Movie

Rob Keyes — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 02:33:52 +0000

Another inevitable film that will arise from the classic 80s cartoons genre following the successes of Transformers (and undoubtedly next week’s G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra) is Thundercats.

A proposed Thundercats feature film had been proposed years ago and later said to be entirely CGI. Now it seems that the project has been delayed as it sits in kitty litter development hell.

Not to worry though as it’s a near guarantee that this film will get made sooner or later and to help prepare you for what that movie will look like, we have some concept art for you.

Movieline released four images for the CGI-based animated Thundercats movie that, according to ThundercatsLair, has been “shelved” for the time being by Warner Brothers. The following images represent the direction that they were going for with the project and they look very cool.

Lion-O, leader of the Thundercats

Third Earth, new home of the “Cat’s Lair”

Head on over to Movieline to see the other two images featuring The Pyramid and an image of the Mutant Attack as well as higher-resolution shots of these.

With the built-in fanbase of Thundercats and the success of the Transformers movies, I’m surprised that this project, or a live-action film based on the property, hasn’t been fast-tracked for a quick release.

If you’re a Thundercats fan dying for this film to come out, check out the fan-made trailer from the end of last year which features the star-studded cast of Brad Pitt as Lion-O, Hugh Jackman as Tigra and Vin Diesel as Panthro.

Warner Brothers currently has Jerry O’Flaherty, an art director on video games such as Gears of War and Command & Conquer: Renegade set to direct the film based on a screenplay by Paul Sopocy (It’s Alive). There’s no official date of release as of yet but it’s been long said to be a 2010 debut which I doubt now as we enter further into the latter half of 2009.

With the project being put on hold, it could be several years before we see more movement on this, but Screen Rant will let you know as soon as anything happens.

What do you think of the artwork?

Source: Movieline, ThundercatsLair

(Fan-Made) Thundercats Trailer! Ho!

Kofi Outlaw — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 15:38:48 +0000

For those out their who have been eagerly awaiting for the upcoming Thundercats movie to arrive, we have a special holiday treat for you: the first trailer for Thundercats is here!

Ok… if you’re the type who reads the headings of these posts before the actual article, then you (should) already know that what has actually had people across Web yelling “Ho!” recently (aside from all the digital pimps out there trying to earn Xmas bonuses), is in fact a fan-made Thundercats trailer, which is…pretty entertaining.

The “trailer” was made by San Francisco graphic artist WormyTV, the same artist responsible for past photoshop classics like The Dark Knight teaser (which featured the first “real” image of Heath Ledger as the Joker), and the now infamous Spider-Man 3 gif (which featured the first “real” image of Venom).

According to Wormy, Thundercats: Sword of Omens took a year and a half to produce. The trailer splices together an array of identifiable films, including Aliens, Troy, The Chronicles of Riddick, Garfield, Spy Kids, X-Men: The Last Stand, Galaxy Quest, Underworld, Planet of the Apes, Mortal Kombat Annihilation, Stargate, and (what looks to be) Mad Max.

It’s impressive mashup of clips; add to that the painstaking frame by frame photoshop work needed to transform Brad Pitt into Lion-O, Hugh Jackman into Tigra, and Vin Diesel into Panthro…Let’s just say that Wormy deserves serious props for this (highly amusing) achievement.

On the real side of things, Thundercats is still slated as a 2010 release. No confirmation yet on whether it will be a CGI film as first rumored, or if the project is moving in a new direction. We’ll keep you posted.

In the meantime, take a look at Wormy’s Thundercats “trailer” and let us know what you think. For more WormyTV greats, you can follow the link below.

Source: Wormy TV & You Tube

Thundercats to the CGI Screen

Bruce Simmons — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 00:43:26 +0000

Thundercats Ho! Do you remember Thundercats from the 80’s? I do. I thought Lion-O’s sword, The Sword of Omens, which he used to summon the team and do battle with Mumm-Ra and his minions was totally cool. I also liked Panthro’s cool toys and Cheetara’s speed.

In case you don’t know who / what the Thundercats are, they are a group of cats in humanoid shape that fled their home planet of Thundera after it was destroyed. After escaping that catastrophe, they rename the planet on which they landed ‘Third Earth.’ They must also constantly defend themselves from the evil sorcerer Mumm-Ra who is hell bent on destroying them.

In June of 2007, it was reported that Warner Bros. optioned a script by Paul Sopocy with the intent of making it into a movie. Paula Weinstein was lined up to produce the film via her Spring Creek Productions logo with Jerry O’Flaherty to direct, in hopes of taking advantage of his time in video game art direction for games like Gears of War as an edge in directing this CGI based film.

Yep – you read right. They’ve chosen to go with the idea of animation for the new film that is starting to build momentum towards it’s rumored release date of 2010.

The latest news about the project is being reported over on ThundercatsLair.org. They say the concept artist being hired for Thundercats is Charlie Wen, who has previous visual work as the Visual Development Director for the critically-acclaimed video game God of War II.

Wen confirms this with an entry on his own blog: “took an Art Directing/Character Designing gig on Thundercats.”

The script was written as an origins story line centered around Lion-O coming of age and is Sopocy’s first studio script sale as a screenwriter. His “day job” is senior writer, print advertising, at Fox Broadcasting Co., and he has some previous short film stories under his belt, including Staring at the Sun which screened at the Sundance Film Festival in 2005.

The Thundercats franchise has spurred a number of animated series, toy lines and comic books. Warner Bros. has owned the rights to the animated series since acquiring Telepictures Corp. in 1989.

If you know you’ve watched Thundercats in your younger days, but can’t quite remember it, or you’d just like to see the opening sequence just one more time for old time’s sake, here you go:

Other Sources: Variety
Thanks to Mark Sheard of ThunderCatsLair for the pointer and Ricardo Chahad for the image.