
On March 14th (originally Feb. 28), Ketchup Entertainment will release “The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie” in theaters nationwide. The Warner Bros. Animation feature debuted at the Annecy International Film Festival last June to rave reviews. I screened it in October and spoke with director Peter Browngardt about the zany Daffy Duck and Porky Pig-led film that stays true to the “LT” brand.
A couple years ago WarnerMedia (which has Warner Bros. Pictures, HBO, Max — formerly called HBO Max — and Cartoon Network) announced they no longer wanted to release the movie, and allowed other distributors to have a chance at it. Unfortunately the same success did not come for “Coyote vs. Acme”. That LT-universe live-action / CG combo may, unfortunately, never see the light of day (along with Warner Animation Group’s “SCOOB!” sequel “SCOOB!: Holiday Haunt”).
“The Day the Earth Blew Up” received an awards qualifying theatrical run in Los Angeles in December. Now Ketchup is ready to unveil it across North America. Ketchup has been a co-distributor and co-producer on films such as “Ferrari” (with NEON) and “Big Game” (with EuropaCorp). It’s also been the main distributor of recent releases “Hypnotic” (with Ben Affleck), “Memory” (starring Jessica Chastain), action flick “Weekend in Taipei” and Michael Keaton & Mila Kunis dramedy “Goodrich”. But this is without question Ketchup’s biggest movie yet. Interestingly, Ketchup currently has a bit of a streaming association with Max, as “Goodrich” debuted over the weekend on the streamer and the HBO channel.
As for the Looney Tunes, this marks the second time in four years that Porky and Daffy have been on the big screen, following WB’s “Space Jam: A New Legacy”, the Lebron James-starring sequel to 1996’s iconic “Space Jam”. “A New Legacy” opened in theaters the same day it was available on Max in July 2021, delivering a strong opening weekend but significantly dropping over the next several weeks, totaling just $70.6 million domestically. But that’s not quite as bad as what happened with 2003’s “Looney Tunes: Back in Action”. During a crowded fall and holiday season of family films, it only managed $21 million in North America. Tony Hawk revealed on “Hot Ones” that a planned “Skate Jam” was cancelled because of “Back in Action”‘s low performance.
I think “The Day the Earth Blew Up” will do fine, as long as families and diehard “Looney Tunes” fans of all ages know that it’s hitting theaters — and that it’s in a significant number of markets around the country. Family films have done gangbuster numbers over the past few months, from “Moana 2” and “Wicked”, to “Mufasa” and “Sonic 3”, to last weekend’s “Dog Man” debut and the upcoming “Paddington in Peru”.