The early ’90s were an amazing time for animated television. After the Disney Afternoon established an entire block of ducks and their tales and dark wings, and bears both gummy and airborne, it seemed only proper for Warner Bros to get in on the game as well. The WB launched shows like Batman: The Animated Series, Tiny Toon Adventures, and perhaps the greatest comedy cartoon ever created, Animaniacs. Now, 18 years after anything zany to the max has been produced, IndieWire is reporting that a reboot is in the cards, with Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment back to make it happen.
Not a ton of information has been released just yet; Nerdist reached out to Warner Bros, who responded that they have no comment on this “speculative report.” But according to IndieWire, interest in the series has been rejuvenated since it came to Netflix a few months ago. So, take it all with a grain of salt, but we would certainly love a return of this show in some fashion.
Animaniacs was an incredibly silly but important program during its run between 1993 and 1995 on Fox Kids and ’95-’99 on Kids WB. Ninety-nine episodes were produced, and the series won eight Daytime Emmy awards as well as a Peabody. The series centered on the fabled Warner Brothers and the Warner Sister–Yakko, Wakko, and Dot–following their escape from the studio water tower, and their weird vignette escapades throughout history, literature, and film.
The series also had a number of side stories involving the likes of the mafia-movie pigeons “GoodFeathers,” a cranky, geriatric cartoon star named Slappy the Squirrel, and, easily the most popular of the bunch, “Pinky and the Brain,” about two lab mice trying to take over the world. So popular it even got its own spinoff series that also won a bunch of awards itself.
Though this is definitely not set in stone, with Disney’s recent DuckTales reboot, not to mention pretty much everything people loved has been getting a revived nostalgia series, it wouldn’t surprise us if this happened. And speaking as somebody who, in 1994, made his mom wait in line for three hours to meet and get a picture with voice actors Rob Paulsen and Jess Harnell, I would welcome it. I mean, they’ve got bologna in their slacks for Pete’s sake!
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Images: Warner Bros
Kyle Anderson is the Associate Editor for Nerdist. He’s written the animation retrospectives Batman: Reanimated, X-Men: Reanimated, Cowboy Rebop, and Samurai reJacked. Follow him on Twitter!
