After a bumpy few years at the box office and a few highly polarizing films, Star Wars has mostly been a TV thing under Disney. That has also generated mixed results, from gigantic cultural hits (The Mandalorian), to revivals gone wrong (Book Of Boba Fett, Obi-Wan), to critical darlings (Andor). But the most interesting thing we’ve seen so far is Star Wars Visions. Visions, an animated anthology series, is what Star Wars could be if Lucasfilm allowed people to truly experiment with it. The first season consisted of nine shorts created by separate Japanese studios, each with their own unique t ..read more

We have no idea if we’ll be getting a new look at The Super Mario Bros Movie during the Super Bowl on February 12, but if not, at least they gave us a new scene during the final playoffs game earlier this week. The full spot appears below: It’s another version of the scene that played out in another trailer where, for some reason, Mario is forced to enter a gladiator tournament against Donkey Kong. He proceeds to get the mushrooms beaten out of him (contrary to what usually happens) but in THIS clip, he finds a way out of it: by grabbing an item from one of the mystery boxes floating over th ..read more

What does cancellation mean anymore? Over the past year we’ve seen a lot of animated programs get yanked out of retirement to resume their normal business like nothing happened: Futurama, The Proud Family, Phineas and Ferb, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, The Powerpuff Girls and Mike Judge’s Beavis and Butt-Head. Now Judge’s other famous cartoon has been granted a second chance as well. There were rumblings of a King of the Hill revival in 2021, via stories spread by Hollywood writer Brent Forrester on Reddit. Forrester claimed “The characters have all aged 15 years” in the new version. There is no i ..read more

We’d love to be proven wrong, but we can’t think of any way that Netflix’s ambition to render the beloved anime series One Piece in live-action will result in anything but failure. There’s the fact that the streamer has done this multiple times with other anime properties and never produced anything satisfying, and this was with more grounded concepts that should’ve been easier to make happen (Death Note, Cowboy Bebop). This thing, with its abundance of expensive Devil Fruit Powers, bulging eyeballs, and cartoon insanity, is nearly impossible to recreate faithfully. Netflix released the firs ..read more

There’s no telling how long Amazon Prime’s The Legend Of Vox Machina cartoon will last, but there’s a finite amount of material for it. The show is an adaption of the first storyline from Critical Role, the nation’s most popular D&D liveplay podcast. Eventually the crew at CR dropped those characters and started a new story, roleplaying as a different bunch. It appears Vox Machina is a big success for Amazon because they just ordered a series based on the second campaign too. “The Mighty Nein” ran from 2018 through 2021 and its setup was a lot like Vox Machina’s — a gang of outlaws and mi ..read more

Oh geez! Ever since a reporter for NBC News uncovered charges of domestic violence against Rick and Morty co-creator Justin Roiland, we wondered what they could mean for what is currently the most successful cartoon on TV. This afternoon we got our answer: Adult Swim is officially cutting their ties with the creator, and the roles of Rick and Morty will be recast. The charges against Roiland include “one count of domestic battery with corporal injury and one count of false imprisonment by menace, violence, fraud or deceit.” NBC News reported that “Details of the case, including police body ca ..read more

The 2023 Academy Award nominations were revealed this morning, and the big story is Everything Everywhere All At Once living up to that name by placing in nearly every category. The only one it couldn’t be eligible for was Best Animated Film….but here’s who was. This marks the first year in a while that Disney hasn’t dominated the noms list or is competing with itself. They only have one nominated movie this time, while Netflix has two. Last year we figured the statue would go to Encanto and we were right, but we have no idea which direction things will turn this time. All we do know is that ..read more

No one knows when Harley Quinn Season 4 will premiere on HBO Max, nor if there will be an HBO Max by the time it’s ready (probably not), but you can numb your appetite for new material with the appetizer coming to the streamer next month. Harley Quinn: A Very Problematic Valentine’s Day Special was announced last October. WB picked today to send out the trailer and a basic synopsis: “As Harley goes to obsessive lengths to ensure that her first Valentine’s Day with Ivy is the best ever, Bane’s efforts to impress an unexpected date go horribly awry. Meanwhile, after an unfortunate online dating ..read more

Disney and Marvel have been teasing the animated cartoon Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur for a looooong time. We haven’t posted anything about the last 20 mini-trailers they’ve put up because none of them promised we’d be getting the show anytime soon. But this one…THIS one reveals we might actually see the thing, as quickly as within the next month. Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur is based on the fairly new Marvel comic of the same name by Brandon Montclare and Amy Reeder. The comic and show revolve around Lunella Lafayette, the smartest 13-year-old in the entire world, who, while experimenting in ..read more

The current story floating around out there is that Disney never realized The Owl House was such a hit until the moment they put the first of the three specials, “Thanks To Them,” on YouTube. Viewing numbers instantly climbed into the millions and took execs off guard, even though a quick social media search would have given the same proof. That evidence was noticed, but apparently handwaved because “anything can trend on Twitter.” It’s knowledge gained too late. The damage is done. It’s too late to go back and reanimate everything as a proper third season. Just be grateful a truncated versio ..read more