Adam Wingard set to direct computer-animated adaptation of 'Thundercats'

Hollywood filmmaker Adam Wingard will now helm a computer-animated adaptation of the beloved 1980s Rankin Bass animated series 'Thundercats' for Warner Bros. This new adaptation will be made from a script that he will write along with his frequent collaborator Simon Barrett.

Hollywood filmmaker Adam Wingard will now helm a computer-mated adaptation of the beloved 1980s Rankin Bass mated series 'Thundercats' for Warner Bros. This new adaptation will be made from a script that he will write along with his frequent collaborator Simon Barrett.

According to Variety Dan Lin of Rideback productions and Roy Lee of Vertigo, who have previously produced Wingard's earlier film 'Death Note' was already set to produce the film with a script by David Coggeshall when Wingard signed on.

The original series, which aired from 1985 to 1989, was revived for a single season by Cartoon Network in 2011, and then again in 2020 under the title 'Thundercats Roar'. As a feature film, 'Thundercats' has long been a tricky project to crack for the studio, which has been hiring a small parade of screenwriters and producers since at least 2007 to bring this movie to life.

The underlying story will be relatively simple, a team of humanoid cat-people like Lion-O, Panthro, and Cheetara fight the evil wizard Mumm-Ra on the planet of Third Earth, but gets surprisingly complicated, with a mix of technological space sci-fi and swords-and-sorcery fantasy. There's the mystical blade that holds the Eye of Thundera and the Ancient Spirits of Evil, and then antagonistic aliens like the Mutants of Plun-Darr and the Lunataks.

In an interview with Deadline, which first reported the news, Wingard had made clear that he is not interested in making a 'Cats' style live-action version of 'Thundercats', and instead wanted to take a CGI-approach for the visuals that would embrace the "'80s aesthetic" of the original series.

( With inputs from ANI )