Possible "Mighty Mouse" Film In Development

[wonderfly]

From the front page of AnimeSuperhero.com:

"Paramount Thinking About Mighty Mouse Movie"​

"The story goes that sometime in 1986, Ralph Bakshi was standing in a room full of CBS executives trying to convince them to greenlight any of his team’s ideas for a Saturday Morning cartoon. They put the thumb down to all of them and told him “These days, you need a catchy IP.” Quickly, Bakshi stammered out “Okay, MIGHTY MOUSE! We got Mighty Mouse!”

The suits’ faces lit up — they remembered watching Mighty Mouse cartoons as children. They told him if he came back with a good presentation in a week, they would have a deal. Bakshi’s next step after leaving the office was to get on the phone and say “Find out who owns Mighty Mouse; I just sold a show with him in it.” It turned out CBS themselves owned him and just forgot through decades of neglect."

Read the full article here.

 

[John Pannozzi]

A bit of nitpick, but CBS didn't own Mighty Mouse in the 1980s. At the time, Viacom did, and they were a separate company then.

But in any case, I hope this movie happens, is good and successful. We're long overdue for a modern day Terrytoons revival.

 

[Frontier]

Be curious to see how Mighty Mouse would fare in today's Superhero media climate...

 

[Mandouga]

I think it would fare just fine as long as:

-They don't try to make it a "cinematic universe" style movie
-They don't try to make it another tribute to/parody of pop culture that doesn't know what it's talking about.
-They don't try to make it a self-parody (e.g.,"Uh, what happened to "Here I come to save the day"? "Oh, I don't do that anymore. It's not realistic enough for today's movies!", or something similar, or using the "Comic-Book Movies Don't Use Codenames" trope as either a gag or part of one)
-They don't do anything like that infamous "power of cheese" commercial he was in (I know it would like be comedic, but still)
-They don't try to tease a future movie that they can't guarantee they'll be able to make
-They don't pull a Wonder Park, and ultimately make it a disguised, metaphorical "PSA" of some kind (that is, a movie that focuses more on that and less on the rest of the movie).

Recent superhero movies take themselves too seriously as it is (while certain adaptations of older movies and TV tend to not take themselves seriously enough). Mighty Mouse doesn't need to be done that way. Not only that, but as much as the Ralph Bakshi show was parody, it wasn't just parody. Some things were also played straight, but were never taken too seriously. If anything, it's parody that does know what it's talking about (and why not; Ralph Bakshi once worked at the Terrytoons studio). Heck, in the original shorts, most of Mighty's "enemies" were just cats frightening mice (unless it was Oil Can Harry [his only real "arch-enemy"] threatening Pearl Pureheart), but even then, the shorts were more than just parody. None of the three versions (the shorts; the Filmation series, or the Ralph Bakshi series) ever (really) mocked the idea of superheroes at Mighty's (or the viewers') expense. He would never, ever, ever ignore a crisis just to stuff his face with cheese (just saying). (sigh) Look, there are some lines that you just don't cross, and that one commercial kind of crossed one. For what it's worth, the commercial eventually stopped airing after 9/11 happened, but going back to this topic...

TL;DR, I hope it isn't too serious, but at the same time, I also hope it doesn't try too hard to be funny.

 

[MatthewP]

Be curious to see how Mighty Mouse would fare in today's Superhero media climate...

honestly an ideal movie would prolly be a bakshi-esque romp where mighty mouse goes up against comedic parodies of the edgy snyder-MCU heroes of our time (though not in detriment to himself)

but let's be real, it's prolly something more like "mutant mayhem"

(also it's just like mighty to show up during an era when animation isn't at it's finest)