Last week, Warner Bros. Discovery confirmed that Jim Carrey will be starring in a new live-action film adaptation of The Jetsons. Longtime fans of the original Hanna-Barbera cartoon will no doubt recall that this isn’t the first time Hollywood has attempted to bring the characters to the big screen.
Paramount tried to get something going as far back as 1985, but nothing ever came of it:
Made-for-TV movies like The Jetsons Meet the Flintstones followed in the late ‘80s, but the only theatrically released film the franchise has gotten to date was 1990’s Jetsons: The Movie. However, the long-awaited adaptation wasn’t well-received, and poor ticket sales prevented it from making a profit at the time. That’s in addition to the two dark clouds hanging over the film’s production. And just in case viewers hadn’t heard, the end credits made sure to hit them with this somber reminder that we lost the two lead voice actors before the movie was completed:
Before Jim Carrey’s ‘Jetsons’ Movie, the Franchise Had a Tragic Big-Screen Debut
For the uninitiated, we’re not talking about two nobodies who happened to land these parts. George O’Hanlon and Mel Blanc had been voicing George Jetson and his boss, Cosmo Spacely, respectively, since The Jetsons debuted in 1962. They also came back to reprise the roles for the 1985 revival series and the aforementioned TV films. Jetsons: The Movie would be the last project either of them worked on.
O’Hanlon suffered a stroke in the studio and passed away just after he finished recording his lines. He was 76 years old. Blanc was admitted to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center a few months later, where he died from heart disease and emphysema at the age of 81. Jeff Bergman, who eventually replaced Blanc as the voice of Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, was brought in to complete the dialogue for Blanc and O’Hanlon’s characters following their deaths.
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