It was one of the sweet surprises of 2024. Porky Pig and Daffy Duck, two beloved animated characters that were first introduced in 1935 and 1937 (in the shorts, I Haven’t Got a Hat and Porky’s Duck Hunt, respectively), returned to the big screen in one of the funniest animated features of the year. Directed, co-written and exec produced by Looney Tunes Cartoons maestro Pete Browngardt, The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie finds this duo created by Tex Avery and Bob Clampett (Daffy) and Friz Freleng (Porky) saving our planet from a sinister mind-control scheme hatched up by aliens.
The film itself was rescued from being buried in the Warner Bros. Discovery’s vaults by U.S. indie distributor Ketchup Entertainment. It’s now getting an Oscar-qualifying run beginning on Dec. 13, prior to its official U.S. theatrical opening on Feb. 28. The film stars none other than Emmy-winning voice actor Eric Bauza as the voice of both Daffy and Porky, as well as as Candi Milo as Petunia Pig, Peter MacNicol as The Invader, and other animation favorites such as Carlos Alazraqui, Wayne Knight, Laraine Newman and Fred Tatasciore.
We had the pleasure of catching up with animation veteran Pete Browngardt (Looney Tunes Cartoons, Uncle Grandpa, Secret Mountain Fort Awesome) to find out more about the making of this charming end-of-the-year present:
Animag: First of all, congratulations on the wonderful, hilarious and disarming movie. The audience that I saw it with seemed to be enjoying every second of it. Can you tell us a bit about the history of the movie and how the whole project started?
Peter Browngardt: I was in the heat of production of 209 new Looney Tunes shorts for Max when Warner Bros. came to me and asked me if I had any ideas for a new Looney Tunes feature. So, I went home, thought about it for a few weeks, and I came up with the idea for the movie. There were a couple of things I knew I wanted to do: I knew I wanted to focus on Porky and Daffy because they’re two of the only characters that don’t want to eat or kill each other. I could tell a better story with the two of them as buddies. I also knew the genre: I love 1950s’ sci-fi movies (Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Day the Earth Stood Still, etc.) as Daffy and Porky were also in Duck Dodgers and Rocket Squad. So, I basically put together a sort of pitch board. I have the poster from the Invasion of the Saucer Men in my office! I also loved Tim Burton movies growing up, and he influenced me. I am also a big fan of Bob Clampett cartoons, and had some old lobby cards and sci-fi movie posters. So, I presented them with all these influences and inspirations and said, “OK, here’s the movie. I don’t know fully what it is, but these are the things I want to do with it. I want to put the characters in a sci-fi B-movie from the ‘50s, where they have to save the world!
Now that’s a great start! Please tell us about how you put the whole team together.
Peter: So, we pitched the movie in 2019. I started working on it with the screenwriter (Kevin Costello) and we brought in all the storyboard artists that worked on it. That’s why there’s large writing credit on the film and we all sort of collectively wrote it. [Darrick Bachman, Kevin Costello, Andrew Dickman, David Gemmill, Alex Kirwan, Ryan Kramer, Jason Reicher, Michael Ruocco, Johnny Ryan, and Eddie Trigueros all worked on the screenplay with Browngardt.] We were working during the early Covid days, so I worked in my garage at home. We started recording right when the pandemic started. We actually did some rough animation in house at Warner Bros., but the animation was done by DNA in Montreal and Snipple in the Philippines. Titmouse in Vancouver also worked on a wonderful sequence. We tried to have the studios work on a bunch of things together. We actually finished the movie in February of 2024 and it premiered at Annecy in June.
How great is it that the movie is getting this nice release as well as an award-season push in December?
Peter: It has been such a journey. As you know, the business has its ups and downs and these things happen. I just had faith that we told a good story and we made a good film , and I knew that it was eventually going to get out. I’m just very, very grateful that Ketchup is releasing the movie theatrically, because I do believe that the greatest way to experience the film is in a movie theater.
When I was a kid I used to watch Looney Tunes cartoons on videotapes, but I went to a Chuck Jones retrospective at the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, and Chuck Jones was there. It was so great to meet him in person. They screened a bunch of shorts and it was the first time I ever experienced seeing these shorts with an audience. Of course, it was fan audience, but I have never seen people laugh so hard in my life. It was such an amazing, joyful communal experience.
What would you say was the toughest thing about making this movie?
Peter: Well, the biggest challenge is sort of obvious. It’s just living up to the quality of the classic Looney Tunes in some way. I always say that we’re standing on the shoulders of giants, and I mean the great directors and filmmakers who made these shorts, legends like Chuck Jones, Bob Clampett , Bob McKimson, Friz Freleng and Tex Avery. We’re just hoping that we don’t fall flat on our faces. Also, trying to reach the top 2D animation quality for this brand in that style is hard. The artistry of animation and filmmaking is changing so much and evolving. Technology was a huge advantage for us as well.
Can you discuss the animation process and the tools that were used in the movie?
Peter: Well, it’s a little bit of everything. We actually did some animation right here the old-fashioned way on paper with the animators here in Burbank and via the internet. We used the Toon Boom’s Harmony 2D pipeline for the most part, and backgrounds painted in Photoshop.
We love the way the characters look in this movie and the overall aesthetic and design of the movie. Can you talk a bit about that?
Peter: Because we worked on the shorts for so many years, I got to know this great family and community of artists who can do this stuff really, really well. Our supervising producer Alex Kirwan sort of homed in on this. We were fortunate to work with fantastic designers like Bob McKnight, Dan Haskett and Jim Soper. I never told this to Dan in person, but I’d refer to him as the GOAT [Greatest Of All Time], just like LeBron James is known as the GOAT of the NBA.
Let’s talk about the amazing Eric Bauza who voices both of the main characters now.
Peter: I love Eric’s versions of Daffy and Porky. I think it’s the closest to the great Mel Blanc’s work. It was amazing to watch him do these voices. I would pitch out the board to him over Zoom, as he was working from his home studio. He would do these runs where he didn’t ping pong on the voices. He would start out as Porky because it was less taxing. He would then do all the Daffy lines. Daffy is a little harder on the vocal cords. I was so amazed when we got to the edit room and we started cutting the lines together, we realized that he knew exactly how to answer to the two performances. He had it all in his head and knew how to read the lines. We couldn’t check it during the recording session, and we found this one as we were cutting the lines together.
He doesn’t need to do a huge amount of takes either. He’s such a great student of Mel Blanc and the Looney Tunes cartoon voicing in general. It’s a really special gift because he does his homework. He’s also a very fine artist. He actually started out as an artist before he got into voice acting, so he knows the process very well.
I know that you were at Annecy for the first public screening of the movie. How did it feel to see the movie with a crowd of animation fans at the festival in June?
Peter: That was the first time I ever saw the finished the finished film. We had did some animatics screenings in the studio with family and executives, and you have to keep reminding people that it’s not done yet. But for this screening, it was quite nerve-wracking. I told myself that if it doesn’t get laughs, I don’t know if I’m going to sit through the whole thing. I thought I was going to leave if it starts dying off. But it really played well. Annecy is such a great environment. This was my fifth or sixth time at the festival which will always have a special place in my heart as my first series Secret Mountain Fortress Awesome won a Cristal prize there. It was kind of a surprise and it kind of helped steer my career to get to this point. So I was thrilled that the movie got a great response. It was a magical experience to see everyone laughing and having that communal animation experience.
What is your take on the crazy ups and downs of the animation world these days?
Peter: Well, it is definitely a very challenging time for the entertainment business in general, not just animation. I’ve talked to a lot of veterans in animation who have seen this rollercoaster ride before, but for some reason, this one feels different to me because of financial reasons, and because of the way technologies are influencing our art form. It’s easier to make our films over Zoom and to make TV shows and movies because of the internet, but it’s a less scary. I do believe that artists always find a way, and they are true innovators of film and TV. No matter how difficult it gets to make things, artists will find a way to create beautiful things in the world. So, I am hoping that we have a good flow in the up direction of jobs and productions, because this is the love of my life.
By the way, I am happy that Animation Magazine is still going strong, I had a subscription to your magazine when I was a kid and learned a lot about animation and where to go to find jobs from it.
The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie gets a limited release in L.A. and New York on Dec. 13. Ketchup Entertainment releases the movie in theaters nationwide on Feb. 29.
Watch a clip below:
