Warner Bros. is planning to bring “Tom and Jerry” to life as CG characters that run around in live-action settings, says Variety.
The studio-based Dan Lin, currently producing the upcoming Sherlock Holmes and executive producer on Terminator Salvation, will adapt the classic Hanna-Barbera property as an origin story that reveals how Tom and Jerry first meet and form their rivalry before getting lost in Chicago and reluctantly working together during an arduous journey home.
Eric Gravning is penning the script.
Warners owns the rights to Hanna-Barbera’s slate of popular animated properties and has several of them in development for bigscreen adaptation. Those include Robert Rodriguez’s version of The Jetsons and producer Donald De Line’s Yogi Bear.
“Tom and Jerry” originated as a series of 114 animated shorts, produced by MGM’s toon studio between 1940 and 1960, and won seven Academy Awards. New toons were produced after that, and Warner Bros. released Tom and Jerry: The Movie in 1992 as a feature-length toon.