Animaniacs (2020 TV series)

Animaniacs is an American animated comedy musical streaming television series developed by Wellesley Wild and Steven Spielberg for Hulu. It is a revival of the original 1993 television series of the same name. The new series sees the return of the Warner siblings, Yakko, Wakko, and Dot (voiced respectively by their original voice actors, Rob Paulsen, Jess Harnell, and Tress MacNeille), and Pinky and the Brain (voiced by their respective original voice actors Paulsen and Maurice LaMarche). Two seasons were ordered to be produced by Amblin Television and Warner Bros. Animation; the first season premiered on Hulu on November 20, 2020 and the show's second season will premiere sometime in 2021. A third season has since been ordered by Hulu.

Premise
As with the original 1993 series, the show focuses on the adventures of the Warner siblings, Yakko, Wakko, and Dot—three inseparable, irascible kids—as they engage in further adventures after being absent from television for 23 years, bringing with them the usual wackiness and mayhem they create while adapting to the changes and life of the 21st century. Most episodes are composed of three shorts: two following the adventures of Yakko, Wakko and Dot, with the third featuring fan-favorite characters Pinky and the Brain—two lab mice, one of whom is intelligent and wants to take over the world, while the other is dim-witted and clumsy, often messing up his friend's plans.

Cast

 * Rob Paulsen as Yakko Warner, Pinky
 * Jess Harnell as Wakko Warner
 * Tress MacNeille as Dot Warner
 * Maurice LaMarche as the Brain
 * Frank Welker as Ralph T. Guard
 * Stephanie Escajeda as Nora Rita Norita

Conception
arly stages of developing the revival of Animaniacs at Amblin Television and Warner Bros. Animation began in May 2017. The interest in the revival was driven by a surge of popularity for the original show when it was made available on Netflix in 2016, plus numerous successful projects that have revived interest in older shows, such as Fuller House. The revival was officially announced by the streaming service Hulu in January 2018 in partnership with Spielberg and Warner Bros. Domestic Television Distribution. The broadcast rights for the new series also included rights for Hulu to stream all episodes of Tiny Toon Adventures, Animaniacs, Pinky and the Brain, and Pinky, Elmyra & the Brain.

Spielberg returned to serve as executive producer, alongside Sam Register, president of Warner Bros. Animation and Warner Digital Series, and Amblin Television co-presidents Justin Falvey and Darryl Frank. The show was produced by Amblin Television and Warner Bros. Animation. Wellesley Wild, a writer for Family Guy, was named the showrunner, while Gabe Swarr was named as co-executive producer. In addition to Wild and Swarr, Carl Faruolo served as supervising director.

Wild and Swarr developed the revival to be respectful of the original series as closely as possible. Wild stated "There's lightning in a bottle here and the first thing I'm going to do is keep that lightning in the bottle, vigilantly. In addition, with the show's 20-plus year hiatus, Wild and Swarr believed that a good portion of their audience would be parents who had watched the show as children themselves and were introducing their own children to the new show; they wanted to create a similar Jurassic World effect due to the similar gap from the original Jurassic Park film, and thus partially inspired the series' introductory short being a parody of Jurassic Park. Wild wanted to make sure to keep the same type of bi-level humor that the original show had, with more slapstick and visual comedy that would appeal to younger audiences, while having a higher level of humor that parents and adults would catch on to, often where some of the more risque humor could be included without evoking any censoring.

According to Wild, Spielberg was at every pitch meeting and insisted on maintaining most of the elements of the original show, including the original voice cast and orchestrated music, as well as producing the show as typical of most adult animated shows with a full writers' room in contrast to typical children's animated shows. Spielberg was also heavily involved throughout the storyboarding process to make sure that the show was heading in the right direction, according to Wild. Both Wild and Starr stated that Spielberg wanted the revival to feature more political satire, and they found a middle ground between that and being a children's show.

The revival primarily features the return of the Warner siblings and Pinky and the Brain, with many of the other supporting characters from the original show not included in their own segments; there has not yet been word on whether or not they will return in the future. In the case of Hello Nurse, this has been one of the first characters that the staff knew they could not bring back due to the changing sensibilities between the 1990s and 2020, according to Wild. Similarly, Dot was presented to be more reliant on her wits than being cute, an aspect Wild also believed would resonate better with current attitudes. Similar to the DuckTales reboot, they also considered careful nods to other cartoon characters from related series or past Looney Tunes, but without losing the show's focus on the Warners or Pinky and the Brain. They had attempted to have a segment to feature Freakazoid from the show of the same name, but this fell through due to actor availability.

Casting and music
The revival features Yakko, Wakko, and Dot, as well as Pinky and the Brain; Paulsen (as Yakko, Pinky and Dr. Scratchansniff), Harnell (as Wakko), MacNeille (as Dot), and LaMarche (as the Brain) were confirmed to be reprising their voice roles in October 2019. Abby Trott was picked as a new voice artist on the team. Julie and Steven Bernstein, who both composed additional music during the show's original run, score the revival with a 30-piece orchestra. Additional music is composed by those that were trained by the original show's composers Richard Stone and Randy Rogel. However, other key production personnel from the original series, like Tom Ruegger, were not asked upfront to help craft the series. Ruegger said he was later offered the opportunity to submit a script but declined, as "basically it would be like an audition and I just didn't feel comfortable auditioning for a show that I created".

WaterTower Music will soon release the soundtrack album of the revival digitally in 2021.

Production
Initial storyboarding work started around July 2018. Paulsen confirmed that voice recording had begun around May 2020. The music was recorded during the COVID-19 pandemic, with the Bernsteins coordinating with each musician individually from separate locations to assemble the final pieces.

Wild said of the look for the series, they initially explored various different styles drawn by a variety of artists, but recognized that the original series had its own series of differences in how the Warners were drawn due to the different animation studios. In reviewing those, they found that the episodes produced by TMS Entertainment were generally considered the best and Wild described their work as "The construction is so good; they have so much control." After doing a deep dive to identify the factors that made the TMS portrayals of the Warners work, the team behind the revival were introduced to Genevieve Tsai, an artist working on Warner Bros. and Netflix's Green Eggs and Ham series, who also had been a fan of the original show. Tsai helped to take the details from the TMS deep dive as well as other research into past works that had inspired the original show such as older Looney Tunes shorts, and developed the new look for the Warners, generally more angular and following the same approach TMS had used. They crafted a set of rules alongside the models for the revised characters that they then used when they sent the show off to be animated by seven different studios: Yowza! Animation in Toronto; Tonic DNA in Montreal; Titmouse, Inc. in Vancouver; Snipple Animation Studios in Manila, Philippines; and three studios in Seoul, South Korea: Digital eMation, Tiger Animation, and Saerom Animation. WB Animation in Burbank otherwise handled the pre- and post-production of all episodes. In additional to the character model updates, they wanted the background art to feel like paintings but avoiding some of the stylings of the 90s, like exaggerated curved features.

Paulsen said in an interview that, within the revival, the Warners are aware that they have been off the air for over 20 years. The episodes were prepared in 2019 and the writers had anticipated for events in 2020, but some ended up being affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, such as the planned 2020 Summer Olympics.

Broadcast
The first 13 episodes of the revival premiered on November 20, 2020. The second season of 13 episodes will premiere in 2021. On October 11, a first-look clip was released during the Animaniacs panel at the 2020 New York Comic Con, parodying Spielberg's own Jurassic Park with a caricature of Spielberg in the role of John Hammond having "reanimated" the Warners. The clip was introduced as the cold open from the first episode of the revived show. On October 12, 2020, the names for the first episode segments were leaked. The trailer was released on October 21, 2020.

The show also aired in Canada on Teletoon. It began with a four-episode marathon on the evening of November 20, 2020 before easing into a permanent time slot of Saturday mornings the following day.

Hulu ordered a 10-episode third season in February 2021.