Tiny Toon Adventures (lost original film production; 1987-1988)

Steven Spielberg in 1990.

Status: Lost

Tiny Toon Adventures was a feature film in production by Warner Brothers and Amblin Entertainment from 1987 until December 1988.

Conceived by Terry Semel, the president of Warner Brothers, as an answer to other popular cartoons in the 1980s based around the concept of child versions of popular characters, such as A Pup Named Scooby-Doo or Muppet Babies, the original concept for the movie was to follow either child versions of the Looney Tunes characters (something that would eventually exist in the form of the 2001 series Baby Looney Tunes) or their children.

However, after Steven Spielberg was brought into the project, Semel and Spielberg decided to use new characters of similar species and with some similar character types to the originals but with no direct relation instead. People known to have worked on the project within the film's production are Semel, Spielberg, and Dan Romanelli, the Warner Brothers head of licensing.

In 1988, the decision was made to shift the project to television animation in hopes of reaching a broader audience. This television animated Tiny Toon Adventures ran from 1990 until 1992 (with two TV specials airing in 1994 and 1995), and it did receive a direct-to-video movie called Tiny Toon Adventures: How I Spent My Summer Vacation (with no relation to the original movie production).

Not much information about the original film's production seems to be available, and since the television series started production from scratch regarding character creation and design and casting, it's possible that production on the movie didn't get very far despite going on for two years.

References

• 1990 Comic Beat article on the original production. Retrieved 15 Aug '16
• 1990 Entertainment Weekly article on the production. Retrieved 15 Aug '16