LATEST NEWS

Warner Bros Exec Dan Lin Talks 'Tom and Jerry' and 'Bone'

by Alex Billington
December 22, 2009
Source: Collider

I've admitted before that I think Warner Brothers is one of the best studios around. Not only do they almost always release great movies, but there is a certain level of quality to the movies that come from that studio. Our good friend Frosty from Collider caught up with Dan Lin, one of the development executives at WB who not only brought Terminator Salvation and Sherlock Holmes to them, but has a whole bunch of other projects in the works. Some of the more interesting stuff in his interview, however, is in relation to Tom and Jerry, the feature version of the classic Hanna-Barbera cartoon that still plays on TV today. Read on!

Before we get into the thick of things, Lin also talked very briefly about the adaptation of Jeff Smith's comic book Bone that they're also developing as a feature film. We've written about it before and while they're not in-production yet, they are moving along quite swiftly. Lin says: "They’ve done a test of what the movie will look like and it looks amazing. It really looks like a mix of Shrek as far as the three Bone characters, and their comedy, their Looney Tunes or Marx Brothers comedy set in a Lord of the Rings world." Definitely sounds like it could be good, will be very curious to see more from it. But let's get back to Tom and Jerry.

Lin is at least familiar with the show, saying his "kids love [it]" and that he realizes "it's really the originator of cartoon violence." So how are they going to address the violence in a movie? Will it be PG or even PG-13? Will there even be blood? As laughable as these questions may be, they're legitimate when you're talking to someone like Dan Lin, who had to answer these same kind of questions putting the project together anyway.

"We're trying to retain some of the original what we call 'cartoon violence'. There's no blood. There's a lot of laughing involved and you're amazed at what you can do with music. So we really want to retain the spirit of the original Tom & Jerry. We'll see how that changes as we go through the filmmaking process and also the MPAA process."

They haven't hired a director for Tom and Jerry yet, but they at least know what they're going for with Eric Gravning writing the script. Lin calls it a "live-action/animation hybrid" and explains that "I would say certainly look-wise you can talk about Scooby-Doo. You can talk about Alvin. What I mean is CGI creations of the cat and the mouse." But separate from those, it'll have a "different tone." Makes sense and it also makes me a bit concerned. Not that I really had high hopes for a Tom and Jerry movie, but I guess I just don't want another Scooby-Doo or Alvin-like movie since I didn't like either of those. But there is still hope!

You can head over to Collider to read the full interview with Dan Lin on Bone and Tom and Jerry. We'll be sure to keep you updated on both of the projects, which still need directors (as far as we know). Stay tuned!

Tweet Pin It

Related categories: Movie News, Opinions