Among American cinema’s most beloved cartoon characters, Daffy Duck and Porky Pig improbably, amazingly and happily return to the big screen Friday in the 2D animated adventure, “The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie.”
Warner Bros. introduced its Looney Tunes animated shorts in 1930 as a rival to Walt Disney’s Silly Symphonies. They ceased production in 1969 but have frequently been revived, most recently on MAX under director Pete Browngardt.
He’s responsible for “The Day the Earth Blew Up,” the first fully-animated feature-length film in Looney Tunes history, starring Porky Pig and Daffy Duck (both voiced by Eric Bauza).
The wildly propulsive adventure involves Daffy and Porky at the local bubble gum factory where they discover a secret alien mind control plot.
“I developed and created, produced, directed 200 shorts for MAX, the ‘Looney Tunes Cartoons.’ They liked how that was going, so they asked me for some long-form movie ideas with Looney Tunes,” Browngardt, 45, said in a joint Zoom interview with Bauza.
“I pitched basically the original concept for ‘The Day the Earth Blew Up’ which then went into development and the rest is history. Now we’re here.”
Animation is a mighty commitment: “I started this in 2018. We finished 20th February of ’24. Six years from pitch to delivery of final product film. It’s very time-consuming.
“Obviously, all animation is time consuming. It’s my love. It’s my passion as an artist, and I’m just really proud of the film and everyone involved.”
“I had worked with Pete previously. He really is one of the hardest working directors and showrunners in animation today,” Bauza, 45, said, speaking in his Daffy Duck voice.
“No one could have done this the way he did, with an army of risk-breaking animators.
“And it’s worth it because these, after all, are characters 90 years old. The fact that we’re still talking about them says something about the groundwork laid before us by directors like Bob Clampett and the great Mel Blanc, who created not just the sound of the characters but their personalities.”
Their lasting impact, Browngardt said, “speak to the inherent truths of humanity. That might sound really heavy and big but I do believe that’s what it is.
“They tapped into these personalities and characters and developed them to speak the voice of the people. They can comment on society and satirize the world we live in. I think we need a lot of that in the world.
“The Simpsons did it. Mad magazine did it. But Looney Tunes were the origins. When you tap into something that so cuts you to the core, humor-wise and also satirically, it lasts maybe forever.”
“The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie” is in theaters March 14