New ‘Cartoonist-Driven’ Looney Tunes Shorts To Debut At Annecy

Warner Bros. Animation’s new series of Looney Tunes shorts will debut on Monday, June 10, at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival. It’s a fitting place to launch them since the first announcement about this innovative project happened last year at the festival.

A few of the shorts will screen in front of the festival’s opening night film, the previously-announced Playmobil: The Movie, and will additionally screen at the festival’s open-air lakeside screening on the same day.

The new shortform series, spearheaded by Pete Browngardt (creator of Uncle Grandpa), promises a return to “cartoonist-driven” filmmaking, the approach that was used on the classic Looney Tunes shorts made between the 1930s-1950s. It’s the first time in nearly 60 years that Warner Bros. is using this approach in an extensive way for its Looney Tunes program. In the cartoonist-driven approach, artists come up with everything from the premise though the gags and story, and the finished cartoons may reflect the individual cartooning styles and personalities of the artists who are making them.

The first “season” of the new Looney Tunes shorts will be comprised of 1,000 minutes of animation, with each short varying from one to six minutes in length. WB intends to distribute the shorts across multiple platforms including digital, mobile, and broadcast.

Annecy will also present a panel about the new Looney Tunes shorts on Wednesday, June 12. Participants in the panel include Browngardt, as well as Alex Kirwan (Looney Tunes Cartoons supervising producer), Audrey Diehl (vice president, series, Warner Bros. Animation) and Sam Register (president, Warner Bros. Animation and Warner Digital Series). More shorts will be screened at that presentation, in addition to a behind-the-scenes look at the production of the shorts.