If you’re not a fan of “Liberty Meadows”, you might be a fan of cheesecake, so, either way, the news that Frank Cho has pulled “Liberty Meadows” out of development hell and is back on a publication schedule, with issue #38 coming out later this year, is great news. Especially since issue #37 came out five years ago.
So, what happened? Cho had the typical Hollywood experience of clueless executives, retarded ideas, regime changes, and waffling that pretty much defines the development hell experience. In his own words:
Let’s back track a minute. About 3 years ago, Sony got the rights to Liberty Meadows to develop it as a downloadable original cartoon series for their new Sony Digital division. I wrote the original pilot episode but it was rejected for being too “risque”. So other writers were brought in to tone it down and make it more kid friendly. Once I read the rewrite, I thought it completely missed the point of Liberty Meadows. So I rewrote the rewrite, and this went back and forth couple of times until we reached a compromised script. We turned that script into an traditional 2D animated pilot episode.
Enter Sony Television division. They saw the pilot episode and liked it. Liberty Meadows get bumped up to their television division and a TV series is planned. However there is one request, Sony Television people wanted Liberty Meadows to be more “risque” with adult humor like the “Family Guy”. This is the point where I rip my hair out in frustration. Sony Digital people rejected my original script for that very reason, for being too “risque”.
So I go back and re-polish the original script, adding more scenes to make it longer to fit the television episode time frame. As I’m doing this, a new Sony television contract is being drafted to replace my Sony digital contract. Then the recession hit. Then the three Sony executives who were shepherding this project along since the beginning leave Sony. The new guy who takes over have no interest in projects started by his predecessors. Thus Liberty Meadows TV show goes into limbo… and we wait and wait. Ultimately under the inactivity clause, all the Liberty Meadows rights revert back to me, and concludes my 2 year journey at Sony.
“Liberty Meadows as a Family Guy clone” sounds almost, but not quite, as appealing as being lit on fire, so thank God that’s by the boards. If Brandy said something like “that reminds me of the time I used a pop culture reference to substitute for an actual joke”, it’d prove TV as a medium should be ended.
[ via the rehabbed animals at BleedingCool ]