Warner Brothers is looking to try and bring the classic 1960s Hanna-Barbera cartoon series Jonny Quest to live-action film once again, and it looks like they might have found the perfect man for the job: Spy Kids creator and director Robert Rodriguez. Along with Pirates of the Caribbean writer Terry Rossio, Rodriguez is re-writing a draft from screenwriter Dan Mazeau, which as was apparently good enough to make The Black List, the annual list of the year’s best unproduced screenplays. There have been several attempts over the years to bring Jonny Quest to the big screen. Superman and Goonies director Richard Donner was the first one to try his hand at it, later followed by director Pete Segal. There was even a version that would have starred Zac Efron and the Rock in the works, but none of them ever got off the ground.
The original Jonny Quest cartoon was a homage to the pulp adventures and serials of the 1930s and 1940s, as well as the early James Bond stories — except with a young, genius kid at the center of it all. Although the original Hanna-Barbera series only ran for one season of twenty-six episodes, those cartoons have lived on in syndication ever since. Jonny Quest has been revived several times since then in the ’80s and ’90s. (Although the original episodes are still by far the best ones, since they originally aired in prime time and weren’t as kiddified as later Hanna-Barbera action/adventure toons like Super Friends, Space Ghost, and the like.)
The original Jonny Quest show centered around the 11 year old title character; his father, the genius adventurer and scientist Dr. Benton Quest; Dr. Quest’s life partner full time “bodyguard” Race Bannon; their adopted son from India, Hadji; and their precocious dog Bandit, who unlike most Hanna-Barbera dogs (e.g. Scooby, Scrappy and Huckleberry Hound), actually didn’t talk. Together they would get into adventures fighting evil organizations, mummies, you name it — all to the tune of an awesomely jazzy theme song, which I really hope Robert Rodriguez manages to work into the movie somehow.
Are you stoked about a possible Jonny Quest movie, and who would you like to see in the title role? Let us know in the comments below.
[HT: Deadline]
