“The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie” – Sci-fi Zaslav couldn’t destroy

It’s hard to believe, but if we remove from the equation the so-called compiled films (i.e., collections of several or a dozen short films), we have just witnessed an epoch-making event: the premiere of the first fully animated feature film from the Looney Tunes universe. For some reason, The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie made it to theaters without much fanfare. What a pity, because it’s really a great movie, guaranteed to provide fun for both younger and older audiences alike.

It starts like a classic sci-fi movie: a scientist and an unidentified flying object that, upon falling to Earth, hits the roof of a house. Of course, it just so happens that our heroes, Daffy Duck and Porky Pig, live in this house. A punctured roof is a big problem—especially since a building inspection is scheduled for the next day. The characters are given a week to fix it. If they fail, their beloved home will be demolished. In a desperate act, Daffy and Porky take on various jobs, but each ends the same way: quick dismissal due to Daffy’s insubordination. Eventually, they land on a trial day at a chewing gum factory. Just when it seems like they’ve found their niche and the house will be saved, Daffy uncovers a cosmic conspiracy aimed at taking control of the brains of all the inhabitants of the planet.

If the plot description seems a bit convoluted to you, that’s good—nothing in the world of Looney Tunes can be too simple, after all. The characters die just to be reborn in the next scene, anvils may fall on someone’s head at any moment, and any object has the right to turn into something completely different in the blink of an eye (most likely something flammable). That’s the charm of this 90-year-old series. The creators of Porky and Daffy stay true to it: here, giant mallets, flamethrowers, and other inventive, totally harmless gadgets are put into action. And all of this is animated in a visually pleasing, now somewhat old-school drawing technique, with only a few 3D elements added.

The chaotic, pure slapstick energy is cleverly combined in Porky and Daffy with patterns taken from the classic American horror and sci-fi films (this is actually hinted at by the of the film—The Day the Earth Blew Up). Suffice it to say that the animation begins like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, then evolves into a hybrid of The Thing by John Carpenter and Night of the Living Dead by George Romero, and ends with a mission to save humanity in the style of Armageddon by Michael Bay. While younger viewers will eagerly follow the spectacle unfolding before their eyes, older film buffs can comfortably sit back and enjoy the numerous intertextual references and double entendres (with my favorite being “What about the witch’s chicken!” leading the way).

Porky and Daffy is exactly what Looney Tunes has accustomed us to in its finest expressions: a showcase of human creativity. A kaleidoscope of endless, absurd gags strung together on a thin but solid plot thread (11 screenwriters on the payroll do their job). Peter Browngardt’s film outshines all previous attempts to bring Looney Tunes to the big screen, including the cult Space Jam. The more one reads about the massive challenges the team faced to complete their mission, the more disappointing it is.

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Browngardt shares that The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie was initially meant to be a series for the Max platform. Then came 2022 and the merger of Warner Bros. with Discovery, which led to painful internal cuts. Among the victims were Batgirl, Scoob! Holiday Hunt, and Coyote vs. Acme—three films that Warner’s CEO, David Zaslav, wrote off for tax purposes and locked away (most likely forever). The decision was the result of a cold, cynical calculation: it was more profitable for the company to shelve these titles rather than risk their release, investing money in distribution and promotion. Browngardt’s animation survived because it suddenly became a film, which reduced the budget to just $15 million. However, due to financial reasons, Warner refused to distribute it—if they wanted their film to hit theaters, the creators had to find an external distributor on their own. Fortunately, after enthusiastically received screenings at the Annecy Festival, a company called Ketchup Entertainment acquired the rights to distribute the film in the United States.

The case of the animation directed by Browngardt clearly shows how poorly managed Warner Bros. Discovery is at the moment. Iconic brands like Looney Tunes and Scooby-Doo are rusting under the heel of David Zaslav—one of the most hated figures in contemporary pop culture. The effects of such practices are best illustrated by the results of test screenings, which Browngardt shared in the aforementioned interview. As absurd and sad as it sounds, almost no child was familiar with characters like Daffy Duck or Bugs Bunny before the screening of the film.