thundercats

June 11, 2007, 8:00 AM

Esquire was given the first behind-the-scenes look at Thundercats: The Movie -- meeting the cast, taking some hasty portraits of them in their new makeup, and wrapping our hands around an early prototype of director Jon Favreau's favorite new toy, the Sword of Omens.
"After Iron Man, I was wiped, but when they brought up the Thundercats, I was so in," said Favreau, who jumped right into making the film after Warner Bros. purchased the script last week. "I mean, the Sword of Omens? Lion-O holding it to his crotch and screaming progressively louder until it gets full extension -- there's not a better meat-spanking joke out there."
The one thing Favreau did take seriously, however, was the casting. On day two of filming, Favreau said that like his choice of Robert Downey for the Tony Stark role in Iron Man, he'd been considering lead actor Hugh Jackman for the project since he heard about it on June 5. However, Jackman says it was almost a short-lived proposition.
"When I asked them if I could just keep my hair from X-Men for the role, John was the one who had to pull me aside and give me the bad news," Jackman said. "He said 'Hugh, your head's going to look like the steeple of a Russian Orthodox church for a few months.' I nearly died."
Jackman was far from the only one with wardrobe problems. For the role of Cheetara, co-star Jessica Simpson was covered in head-to-toe cheetah spots that, at times, didn't provide much camouflage.
"I honestly think I'm wearing less makeup for this role than I did on those Proactiv commercials," Simpson laughed. "Becca [Rebecca Romijn Stamos] told me that no matter how much they put on me, some geek with a DVR would take a screen grab of the half second where my nipple shows anyway. So I just told the powder boys 'go easy, fellas.'"
Perhaps a little skin isn't such a bad thing when your target demo is in its late 20s and early 30s and has fueled box office receipts for such '80s nostalgia trips as this year's TMNT and the upcoming Transformers movie. Nobody knows this better than Seth Green, who has made a career rehashing '80s pop culture for Robot Chicken and Family Guy. Though nostalgia drew him to the part, he said hundreds of hours of preadolescent cartoon watching hadn't prepared him for the challenge of voicing Thundercat setup man Snarf.
"I thought I would be able to just go into the Robot Chicken sound booth, say 'Snarf, Snarf, Snarf' in the Chris Griffin voice for 20 minutes, and leave, but that wasn't the case," Green said. "Much like Greg the Bunny, Snarf's a much more complex character than he appears on the surface. You have to remember that he's with Lion-O all the time, so he's feeling and experiencing everything Lion-O is. He may be the greatest sidekick in modern fiction."
Green isn't the only actor delighted to get a part in the big-budget blockbuster -- Michael Clarke-Duncan, who will be playing Panthro, calls his latest role "the chance of a lifetime."
"I was kind of hurt when I heard that (Ice) Cube got the part of Roadblock in the G.I. Joe project, but when Panthro came up, I jumped on it," Clarke-Duncan said. "I mean, he's a giant blue panther. And I look exactly like him."
Children's advocates say Thundercats, like TMNT, Transformers, and the upcoming Care Bears movie, displays a lack of imagination that is harming the next generation of cartoon watchers. A group headed by Genndy Tarkovsky, the mind behind the Cartoon Network's Powerpuff Girls and Dexter's Laboratory, protested outside the studio gate, calling for more quality entertainment choices for kids.
"These people forget that there were adults making all of these great characters for them when they were growing up," Tarkovsky said. "Now that they're older, they just keep making mindless cartoons like Aqua Teen Hunger Force for themselves and running Saved by the Bell on cartoon channels. I don't know why, but for some reason this generation just can't let it go."

July 24th, 2007

Thundercats is on its way to the big screen……at last! Warner Brothers are turning the 80’s animated series and toy line into a movie from a script written by Paul Sopocy, first-time screenwriter.

Spring Creek Pictures are set to produce the movie. Dan Lin, Senior Vice President of Production at Warner Brothers, will produce along with Paula Weinstein, Dick Robertson and Lew Korman.

Despite initial news stories, the movie is going to be a CGI-animated feature and not a live action movie. The movie is set to be released in 2010 / 2011.