Dreamworks animating Kroft’s “Lidsville”

Hollywood has been taking classic animated cartoons and converting them to live action features for years. Now, The New York Times is reporting that Conrad Vernon (Monsters Vs. Aliens) will direct an animated version of Sid and Marty Kroft’s 1973 live-action Saturday morning show Lidsville, for Dreamworks.

I love the Kroft shows and Lidsville was one of the stranger ones (if that can be imagined). According to the Times piece, Vernon says:

“When I talk to a lot of adults about this, they look back and go ‘Oh, that show was great but it was so weird.’ And that’s what made me want to watch every single day.”

As anyone who still knows the “Lidsville” theme song by heart can tell you, the original series centered on a boy named Mark (played by Butch Patrick of “The Munsters”) who discovers a world of anthropomorphized hats, headpieces and chapeaus. There he befriends characters like Rah-Rah the football helmet and Nursie the nurse’s cap, and is pursued by a green-skinned magician named Horatio J. HooDoo (played with scenery-chewing zest by Charles Nelson Reilly).