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.
But that neglect was going to make Mighty Mouse a hard sell to the kids of the 1980s, who did not have the same connection. Bakshi knew it was going to need more. So he hired the best talent he could on his budget, a bunch of scrappy twentysomethings fresh out of college with big ideas, and let them loose. Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures would have none of the creative restrictions that handicapped typical cartoons of that decade. Model sheets were ignored and wild expressions were encouraged. The scripts were full of smart, satirical writing that took shots at pop culture and even other Saturday Morning cartoons.
All of this was brand new at the time, and it made Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures a critical hit. The staff who worked on the series went on to have robust careers, creating hits of their own in the 90s.
So why am I bringing this up? Because Paramount just said they were looking into a Mighty Mouse movie, and the response from the social medias is likely to be “but who cares about Mighty Mouse anymore?” It’s not about the IP. It’s about what you do with it. Mighty Mouse is Exhibit A for this. Most of the Terrytoons have been completely forgotten and if it hadn’t been for the Bakshi show, Mighty Mouse would be as well.
Who’s the right man to bring him back this time? Is it Ryan Reynolds? That’s who it’s gonna have to be. Paramount Animation’s deal is with Maximum Effort Productions, Reynolds’ production team. Matt Lieberman, who wrote the script for Reynolds’ movie “Free Guy,” is writing this one. Brad Butler, vice president of animated features at Paramount, will oversee the production.
Paramount Animation has been on a roll lately, creating quality films like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem and Transformers One. Can they save the day for Mighty Mouse?
