Samurai Jack animated movie greenlit

[BORTZ]

As we zeroed in on how Frederator Films would approach animated feature filmmaking (D’oh! Put the talent first, the same way we did in TV!) I started hanging with the best talent we knew. And, at the head of the list was Genndy Tartakovsky.

That was a pretty easy decision. I was president of Hanna-Barbera when Genndy came to the studio as a key member of Donovan Cook’s 2 Stupid Dogs team. I greenlit his first Dexter’s Laboratory short, and he delivered one of the great cartoons in recent history. Then there was the DL series, also one of the greats. Samurai Jack and Clone Wars were after my time, but I watched Genndy grow as a filmmaker from afar, and I remembered Genndy as one of the best people I’d worked with in my entire career. Talented, smart, dedicated, relentless, amazing leader, moral, and fun. What a rare guy.

I set up the lunch with no expectations. After all, Genndy had just come out of a multi-year relationship with George Lucas, and had set up The Orphanage Animation Studios to develop his own feature films; what could Frederator offer him at this point? But, on the way I realized there was an opportunity. I immediately called Jim Samples, then-President of Cartoon Network, and right away he agreed to a first in the network’s history, granting of rights to an independent production company. They would grant Frederator Studios the animated movie rights to the hit TV series Samurai Jack, as long as we agreed that Genndy would be intimately involved. Agree?!!! How else could we be interested?

Genndy was thrilled when I delivered the news. He’d been disappointed that CN and New Line Cinema had abandoned the project (both animated and live action films) and felt he’d let his fans down. Here was the chance to finish what he’d started, and reclaim a special set of characters he’d created.

Without going into all the details, the deals took forever (forever!) to close (in fact, some of them still have dangling participles) and by the time we announced the formation of Frederator Films in June 2007 surprise was awaiting all of us. J.J. Abrams, a huge Jack fan, had agreed to be my co-producer on the picture through his company Bad Robot Productions at Paramount Pictures. We knew that with JJ and his producing partner Bryan Burk we’d be in more than good hands and improve our chances tremendously of actually seeing the movie on the big screens.

After lunch with Genndy, and the success of starting our company with Samurai Jack, our talent approach to animated movies had a prayer. The unanswered question was “what next?”. In fact, that was really about 1000 questions.

–Fred

(More to come…)

source
http://frederatorblogs.com/frederatorfilms...ch-with-genndy/

This is huge for me. I absolutely love the Samurai Jack series and was pissed when it was cut.
brb, freaking the eff out.

 

[Overlord Nadrian]

A movie?! With Samurai Jack?! Awesome! I really liked the series as a kid but then all of a sudden they stopped airing it and I was sad

But now I'm happy again, of course!

 

[yuyuyup]

bring back jack/dexter/stupid dogs but also all the other great shit that got axed DO IT

 

[Deleted User]

Thanks for the heads up, I really liked Samurai Jack. Hope Phil LaMarr does the voice on this too.

 

[pitman]

Thanks for the heads up, I really liked Samurai Jack. Hope Phil LaMarr does the voice on this too.

I hope the Scotsman makes an appearance

 

[BORTZ]

Thanks for the heads up, I really liked Samurai Jack. Hope Phil LaMarr does the voice on this too.

I hope the Scotsman makes an appearance

The Scotsman was freaking bad ass. And hilarious.
My favorite characters/bad guys were the ultrabots and the ninja he killed. Id love for them to make an appearance but i doubt it.

 

[_Chaz_]

Really? This show hasn't aired for years, why bring it back now? If it's not good enough, people will be pissed.

 

[DeMoN]

Did this show ever have a conclusion? It was the same shit over and over again. Jack fights Aku, Aku runs away, repeat.

 

[LINK289]

@DeMoN

That plot sounds familiar... OH! Mario.

 

[BORTZ]

Really? This show hasn't aired for years, why bring it back now? If it's not good enough, people will be pissed.
That person will be me. But i guess thats why if they are going to do it at all they have the original art director do it.

QUOTE(DeMoN @ May 12 2010, 08:06 PM) Did this show ever have a conclusion? It was the same shit over and over again. Jack fights Aku, Aku runs away, repeat.

Nope. Which is what im hoping the movie will do. Bring us some closure.

 

[Deleted User]

Did this show ever have a conclusion? It was the same shit over and over again. Jack fights Aku, Aku runs away, repeat.

Yeah, that bugged me. The subplots were entertaining though.