Bugs has a smartphone...what's up with that, doc?
Brand-new Looney Tunes are joining brand-new episodes of Sesame Street on HBO Max, as the yet-to-be-launched streaming service makes its already strong bid for parents’ streaming dollars even stronger.
A trailer for Looney Tunes Cartoons, as the new show is known, shows Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd, Wile E. Coyote, the Road Runner, Marvin the Martian, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Sylvester, Tweety, and Yosemite Sam. It’s a damn impressive roster and a sign that the producers of the show aren’t trying to reinvent the wheel.
They all but said so in a press release: “Marquee Looney Tunes characters will be featured in their classic pairings in simple, gag-driven and visually vibrant stories.” Even the trailer delivers on this, with 86 seconds of Bugs tormenting Elmer, Tweety tormenting Sylvester, and the Road Runner tormenting Wile E. Coyote. It’s hard to think of any more classic pairings than those.
The big WTF moment from the trailer is when Bugs whips out a smartphone. This feels wrong for anyone raised on reruns of the Chuck Jones-Tex Avery-Mel Blanc golden era of the cartoons, but your kids probably won’t think it’s weird, inured as they are since birth to the constant presence of cell phones.
Looney Tunes Cartoons will premiere when HBO Max does, on May 27. Its first season will contain 11 80-minute episodes, each composed of multiple shorts. Here’s hoping that they keep the modern references at a minimum. If an episode shows Bugs trolling Elmer on Twitter or Tweety Zoom-bombing Sylvester we’ll know that the show has lost its way.
