The Wombles (partially found cancelled CGI reboot of British children's TV series; 2013-2017)

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TheWombles2016TitleCard.png

Title card.

Status: Partially Found

The Wombles (cancelled CGI reboot) was going to be a rebooted CGI series based on the original series by Elisabeth Beresford and was going to be directed and produced by Mike Batt's Dramatico Productions.

Background

The reboot was announced in 2013[1] when Dramatico Productions bought the rights to the reboot at the time. Ray Winstone would've joined the voice cast with Bernard Cribbins; who previously narrated the original series, reprising the role as Great Uncle Bulgaria.[2] And it was also originally intended to air on Channel 5's preschool block "Milkshake" in 2015.

New toys were also made during the London Toy Fair 2015.[3]

But then a year after its original intending date, it ended up in development hell, until it over-ran the production budget and was eventually cancelled due to it. Mike Batt had filed for bankruptcy and left as director of Dramatico, and soon after that, the original recording label was completely closed because of it.

But those two episodes (Rocket Womble and Green Cake) however were screened at Cambridge Film Festival in 2016 earlier on before the cancellation of the reboot.[4]

Availability

Three years later, Mike Jupp, who was the storyboard lead and art director as the series was in production, uploaded the full "Rocket Womble" episode on YouTube in Feburary 7th 2020. He stated that the episode was 90% in near completion and that he's always proud of the episode's storyboard. Several months later, the full episode was eventually taken down by Mike Batt's Dramatico Productions due to copyright infringement despite being in good terms during the production of the show. Earlier on, the episode was reuploaded on the Internet Archive website a day after the YouTube upload and can still viewed down below on the website.

But as of now, the only things that ever resurfaced on the internet are the first episode, Rocket Womble, Ray Winstone's voice session on the reboot, the screenshots of episodes, and a couple of concept arts by Mike Jupp on his own website and Mike Batt on his own Twitter respectively.

Photo Gallery

Screenshots

Early development between 2013 to 2015

Concept Art

Mike Jupp

Character and Prop designs
Storyboards

Mike Batt (Twitter)

Miscellaneous

Video

Episodes

# Episode Title Intended Date Status
1 Rocket Womble October 24th 2016 (Cambridge Film Festival) Found
2 Green Cake October 24th 2016 (Cambridge Film Festival) Lost
3 Super Womble 2016 Unaired
(Only a storyboard for this episode can be found.)
4 Orinoco Kid 2016 Unaired
(Only a storyboard for this episode can be found.)
5 The Womblevision Song Contest 2016 Unaired
6 An Unknown Christmas Episode 2016-2017 Unaired

External Links

References