Thanks to the recent incredible, absurd and just plain baffling success of live action cartoon movie franchises like The Smurfs ($910 million worldwide to date!) and Alvin and the Chipmunks ($1.1 billion worldwide!!!), it’s really quite shocking that more studios haven’t tried to take some of our classic childhood cartoons to the bank. But it’s better late than never for a cash cow-loving studio like Disney, which is reportedly bringing the Saturday morning cartoon franchise Chip N Dale Rescue Rangers to theaters, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
The live action/CGI take on the chipmunk-run detective agency will be helmed by commercial director Robert Rugan, who brought us this hilarious Durex ad that will change the way you play with condoms forever.
What’s interesting about this news, though, is the choice of cartoon. I’m not knocking Chip N Dale at all, because Disney’s Saturday morning block was my jam way back in 1989 and 1990, when the chipmunks ran alongside Duck Tales, TaleSpin and Disney’s Adventures of the Gummi Bears. I’m honestly surprised that the Gummi Bears aren’t getting the preferential treatment here, because the medieval adventures are always way more fun than little furballs invading modern day New York City.
Even Duck Tales would have been awesome, just to tackle the modern day economic headlines of the 1% versus everyone else. Although, I’m not sure that parents need their kids learning about the evils of Wall Street from Scrooge McDuck. And just from a theme song perspective, I’d rank Gummi Bears first and Duck Tales second (woo-oo!) over Chip N Dale, mainly because I couldn’t remember it off the top of my head (it took me two seconds to get back on track, though).
Again, I’m not sour on the Chip N Dale selection at all, because geek perverts will probably go nuts over Gadget being on the big screen and Kevin James will appreciate the voice work paycheck for Monterey Jack. If anything, I just hope that this opens the door for a CGI/live action adaptation of Darkwing Duck, because that sh*t would be AWESOME.