Hi, I'm Gregory Orr, grandson of Jack L. Warner and producer of the documentary Jack L. Warner, The Last Mogul. And you are listening to The Extras. Hello and welcome to The Extras. I'm Tim Lard, your host. And joining me is George Feltenstein of the Warner Archive and animation historian Jerry Beck. And they're going to provide some more details about the recently announced Blu-ray version of the HBO Max series Looney Tunes cartoons that's releasing on May 19th. And stick around as George also has an update for us on the classic Looney Tunes Collector's Vault series. So you don't want to miss that. Hi, gentlemen. Hello. Hello, Tim. Well, this is exciting. We recently talked about the Collector's Vault. It seems like it was just a few weeks ago. And here we are back. And it's fun to talk more Looney Tunes. But before we dive into the Blu-ray the story of that, I think there are some people in our audience, Jerry, who could benefit from understanding a little bit what this new HBO Max series is, because it has the same name and everything, but it's from 2020 through 2023 or something like that. So it's a modern version, of course. Yeah. Warner Brothers has a lot of classic characters that they love to do in animation, and the audience loves them in animation. There are characters from the Hanna-Barbera library, like the Flintstones and Scooby-Doo. There are characters from the DC Comics library, like Batman. And of course, Looney Tunes. I mean, there's no way around it. Looney Tunes has to be continued. It has to be. And throughout the years, under different regimes, they've done different versions of the Looney Tunes. After that great era when Greg Ford and And Chuck Jones later made a few shorts at the beginning of this century. There was a feeling of we can't touch what they did. What they did was so great that we're not sure how to proceed with that. We have to find the right people. And, you know, I don't know what the thinking was. I think there was at the beginning decades ago, like a cowardice to try anything with the characters. Sam registers. The guy's been running the Warner Brothers animation for, I think, a couple of decades, I think, right now. He's been pretty bold about this. And he took some lessons from the Scooby-Doo franchises and the DC Comics franchises. They do a Batman, Batman the Animated Series, classic, classic cartoon. But when they bring it back the next year, you know, they put it, they finish it. They're going to bring it back maybe in a year or so. They'll do a different take on it. Like they did one called Batman Brave and Bold, which was kind of like a 1966 Batman. They do it differently every time they give it a different little tweak. They've done that with Scooby-Doo as well, whether people have noticed or not. But there's a great series they did called Mystery Incorporated, which is the best version of Scooby-Doo, in my opinion. They've done other variants of that. And of course, with Looney Tunes, they started doing that. You know, they did the Looney Tunes show and, you know, other ways of how can we approach these characters in some way that's modern, new, hip, whatever. Okay. I don't know the origins. I wasn't there in the initial meetings, but I remember being led on and was able to speak to Peter Braungart, who is the person brought in to run this show, this new Looney Tunes cartoons initiative. and I didn't know him. I didn't know what they were up to, but I soon saw. And what I saw was they were using the old model sheets. They were in love with Bob Clampett, Tex Avery, and Chuck Jones, and Frizz Reeling, and all of them. And we're trying to do something in that direction, trying to go. They even knew we kind of can't. We can't do that. We can't be the Beatles. We're not the Beatles. you know we got it we got to be whatever we are uh they they started and they didn look at space jam or any of the other things They just did their own modern day take I don think there anyone I could be wrong about this I don't know. They might have hired an old timer or two, perhaps. But basically, everybody on this particular project was kind of the hippest people from the people who are making Nickelodeon shows and the Cartoon Network shows and what I call the new artists. And they were dying. They were chomping at the bit to do Looney Tunes. And I've met these people. Some of them I met before they were hired. In fact, I even said to Sam, if you had asked me who to bring on to this, I definitely would have named this guy, this guy, this guy, and this guy. All those people are on this. I didn't say hire them. They did it on their own. They found the right people. And these are good. These are funny. The animation is wild. The art direction is fantastic. And they're modern. They're not swipes of old Robert McKimson cartoons from 1952. They're not trying to do something else. They're just doing what the Looney Tunes might have been. And, you know, I get a lot of people who ask me when the series first went on, don't you think this is too different? And I go, no. In fact, look at Bugs Bunny. Look at Daffy Duck. He started out one way, Screwball Crazy Duck. Later on, the staff and Chuck Jones in particular turned him into almost a different character. They always evolve these characters. So in a way, this is sort of the involvement, in my opinion. I bless it. That's fine with me. I think they did a really, really great job. It's a lot of fun. The music is original. The voice, Eric Bowser in particular, Bob Bergen are fantastic as they're trying to do Mel Blanc, but they're not trying. They embody the voices. So I'm a fan. I'm a fan. And I couldn't be happier that they're coming out on Blu-ray because that's the way you should see them. Right. Well, that's a great segue because, George, initially this was coming out only on DVD when it was announced, I think, about four or five months ago. And people were both excited and a little disappointed. And confused. Yeah. Because it's like, well, it would be one thing if this series was older. but this is a very new series why wouldn't they you know why wouldn't the studio put it out in hd and uh you know obviously there are many reasons for that but all we really care about is the fact that now there is going to be a blu-ray from the warner archive why don't you tell us a little bit of how that came about well it's it's not a complicated story the series has its own set of complications, but basically this was going to be a DVD only release to traditional retail, whatever that looks like. And I made a last ditch effort to make sure that these should be seen with really great quality. And we've learned the appeal on Blu-ray of animation and Looney Tunes. And I knew that these works were of a reverential yet modern and individual attitude because the people working on them put their own physical footprint or handprint or whatever print you want to use. It's their work as an homage to all the great animators that came before them. So their work walking into a legacy you should be in awe of if you're an animator. And people have been really, really receptive to that. So when this DVD got announced everyone was asking me well aren you guys going to do a Blu Because frequently what we done with Warner Archive is when something was going to come out as a DVD only this goes back to things like Young Justice or Young Sheldon or Lucifer or Longmire or all these different live action and animated shows that weren't going to get a Blu-ray treatment when they were produced in high definition. So I made my last-ditch pitch effort to do this, and the powers that be said, go ahead. And where the complications come in is there were certain cartoons made by these folks that were not completed. Some of them were not ever on HBO Max, and they were not given the blessing to be part of this release. We were given the ability to take what was greenlit to be this release covering six discs. It's over 17 hours of entertainment for a $34.99 list price for the Blu-ray at six discs. That's, I think, a very hearty deal. So we were very grateful that we could step in and make sure that the consumers who were bummed out that all they would be able to own and have on their shelves that couldn't be taken away from them was not just a DVD, but a Blu-ray so they could watch them in quality better than what they would see if they were seeing it via the internet. And we're happy to be coming out the same day that the DVD is out. There is a customer base, a very large customer base. DVD as a medium still outsells Blu-ray and 4K combined. Really? So there's a lot of people out there that are very happy with DVD and still buying it. But the aficionado consumer, the informed, enlightened, and passionate collector, they want the best possible quality. And if these programs were made in high definition, I think they should be seen that way and owned by people putting them on their shelves and putting it next to the collector's choice and the collector's vault and the platinum collection and all the other Blu-ray things that Mouse Chronicles that was Jerry's little special production. but I'm delighted we're able to fill in that gap and make these shows available. I also want to clarify that our releasing this didn't take away a release slot for another title. It was additive. It was not corrosive. So yes, there's still a lot of animation coming this year, as I said there would be, and we're working on all sorts of projects. And this is actually a good opportunity for me to thank everyone who is watching or listening right now to the extras. If they supported Collectors Vault Volume 2, that support was strong enough to put us into profit, which got us the green light to start working on Volume 3. So it's a definite. It's happening. We're working on it now. And there will be some very, very happy consumers and animation enthusiasts having something to look forward to. And when the time is right, we will announce the 50 cartoons that will be included. So it will be 25 cartoons on disc one that have never been on DVD or Blu before as part of a Warner Brothers animation collection and disc two will be cartoons that have been on DVD but have not been on Blu as part of a Warner Brothers Animation Collection And we hope everything is going to look and sound great. My colleagues are putting a lot of extra work into making sure that that's happening. And we have original negatives on the way to the studio coming from the Library of Congress so that we can do our nitrate scanning from the original negatives for certain things that have not been seen in decades. So a lot to look forward to. I wanted people to understand why we were releasing this, why we didn't announce it when the DVD came out as an announcement, because we were not part of the equation at that time. But the collaboration interdepartmentally between my colleagues and myself is, of course, a very fortuitous one. And it's one that provides ultimately more profit for our group and our division, which is what our job is here, is to bring profit into the company. and when you can do so with wonderful classic films, or what I would say, the new classics. Because at some point, decades from now, people will look at the Looney Tunes cartoons that were made for HBO Max, they might consider them classics, just the way people now that grew up with the early Cartoon Network shows and now have kids of their own think of those cartoons from 1999 as classic. So what defines a classic is an ongoing discussion and differs between who you talk to. But I thought this was something worthy of doing. I'm grateful that we were given the green light to do it. And I hope people enjoy it. Well, as you can tell, this all kind of came together very quickly here with this Blu-ray of the Looney Tunes cartoons from the HBO Max series. so just wanted to get a little bit more detail out to everybody and for those of you who were a little uncertain of what this series is because you don't have HBO Max and you hadn't heard of it I think Jerry clarified for all of us where it kind of sits in the history of Looney Toons that this is a a more modern telling but in the style of the classic Looney Toons so I have watched it I enjoy it it's a fantastic to me that something that was put out on streaming comes full circle back to physical media. And those of us who collect the physical media and love the classic Unitoons can now enjoy these, access these, but there is a lot of content on this release. So it is really packed. And as George said, it's a great value. So if you're interested in it, I do have links to purchase or pre-order both the Blu-ray. And of course, if you are still on DVD, you can get the DVD as well. It's the exact same content. There are some extras on this release. There are 12 sports-related episodes that are on here that are the extras. So you can look for that. Again, the same on the Blu-ray and the DVD. And I'm excited. I'm sure you are as well. If you have been collecting all of the Looney Tunes Collectors Choice and Collectors Vault series, that there will be a Collectors Vault Volume 3. It's greenlit. They're working on it. And we'll have more information as that comes up in the future here. I hope you find value on the extras. And if you do, please subscribe. We'll also be sure to get you the information you want about the next release of the Collector's Vault Volume 3. And anything else that jumps up and comes up like this Looney Tunes cartoons collection. Thanks for listening. Thanks for watching. And until next time, stay slightly obsessed about Looney Tunes. you
