ThunderCats Movie Reboot Officially Confirmed by Warner Bros

More than five years have passed since Warner Bros. and director Adam Wingard (Godzilla vs. Kong, The Guest) announced plans for a live-action film adaptation of the 1980s cartoon classic ThunderCats, though little progress has surfaced publicly since then. Wingard has prioritized blockbuster projects such as Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire and the A24 action-thriller Onslaught, but he provided a mostly positive update on his ThunderCats film this summer.

The live-action ThunderCats movie is not dead, according to Wingard. He actively worked on the project earlier this year.

In an interview with Polygon, Wingard confirmed that ThunderCats remains on his list of in-development projects.

“My career’s kind of bouncing around, so different things have taken precedence,” Wingard says. “But [ThunderCats is] still kicking around. I think it’s just a matter of finding time to really re-concentrate and re-engage with it. We did a new draft at the beginning of this year. It wasn’t too long ago, and then things got put on hold for [Onslaught]. So I don’t really have any exciting updates.”

“But it’s not dead. It lives. It’s just not the number one [thing] I’m working on right now.”

A brief history of the ThunderCats movie

Wingard and Warner Bros. announced the ThunderCats movie in 2021. Deadline described it at the time as a large-scale feature film based on the animated television series. Wingard collaborated with writer Simon Barrett—who wrote or co-wrote Godzilla vs. Kong, The Guest, and Onslaught—to expand the ThunderCats universe.

Wingard previously called ThunderCats a dream project and noted that he wrote a 272-page screenplay about the cartoon while in high school.

“My real obsession with ThunderCats came in high school,” Wingard told Deadline in 2021, “the pinnacle of me deciding I wanted to be a filmmaker. […] I actually spent most of my 10th grade year, I completely blew it. I didn’t pay attention in school, made terrible grades. And the reason? I was writing my ThunderCats screenplay through my entire 10th grade year. And I was hand-writing it. The screenplay itself ended up being 272 pages long. I still have it. It was one of those things where I would carry around my notebooks and talk about it.”

Wingard told Deadline that his approach to ThunderCats aims to create a new type of fantasy sci-fi spectacle film.

He also stated that he wants the film to remain authentic to the visual style of the original cartoon. “I want to do a ThunderCats film that takes you back to that ’80s aesthetic. I don’t want to reinvent the way they look; I want them to look like ThunderCats. I don’t want to do it live action, either. I don’t want it to look like Cats. […] I want to do a movie you’ve never seen before. A hybrid CGI film that has a hyperreal look and somehow bridges the gap between cartoon and CGI.”

While public updates on Wingard’s ThunderCats movie have been infrequent, the director recently exited his planned sequel to John Woo’s Face/Off. His continued commitment to ThunderCats serves as an encouraging sign for the adaptation.

There’s another ThunderCats movie

Warner Bros. Pictures Animation announced at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival in June that it is developing a separate ThunderCats movie. The studio shared virtually no details regarding creative personnel or a release date. This development offers fresh hope for fans who have not seen a new series since ThunderCats Roar aired on Cartoon Network in 2020.

It remains unclear whether the separate animated project will impact Wingard’s live-action and CGI hybrid film.

Source: Polygon