Warner Bros Plots ‘The Jetsons’ Animated Feature; Matt Lieberman Writing

January 23, 2015 5:09pm

EXCLUSIVE: Warners Bros is looking to turn the Hanna-Barbera series The Jetsons into an animated theatrical feature. The studio has hired Matt Lieberman to write the script. There was a flurry of rumors sometime back about a live-action version that might somehow involve Kanye West. Not sure what happened there, but I’m told that Lieberman is working from scratch on a fully animated version.

Warner Bros owns that library, which was acquired by Ted Turner before he sold his company to Warner Bros. Lieberman got the job after his script work on the animated Scooby-Doo movie for Warner Bros and Atlas that the studio has put on a fast track.

The Jetsons is based on the Hanna Barbera cartoon series that originated in 1962 and was that production company’s space-age answer to the stone-age The Flintstones.

Lieberman, who started in the Disney Writers Program, has set scripts all over town including the spec 12/24 with 1492 based on a David Guggenheim idea that amounts to a found-footage Santa Claus film. He also scripted Giant Monsters Attack Japan for Paramount Animation, and Short Circuit which Tim Hill will direct. His spec The Pet sold to Disney with Jared Hess attached to direct, and he scripted Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride for Peter Candeland to direct and Evil Genius for Disney.