Looney Tunes returns

It's wabbit season again. And duck season, too.

Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and all your favorite "Looney Tunes" characters are moving on to the next stage of their career on Cartoon Network tonight - but not in the familiar six-minute segments.

Instead, they are heading in the direction that funny folks such as Jerry Seinfeld and Drew Carey went before them - they're starring in a new sitcom, "The Looney Tunes Show."

amNewYork spoke with the show's supervising producers, Spike Brandt and Tony Cervone.

Was it daunting to take on these characters? Tony Cervone: We've been working on "Looney Tunes" stuff on and off - but pretty much on - since 1994. But it's a daunting task to make the first original television show starring Bugs Bunny. It took ... a lot of trial and error before we found the show that really showcased the characters the best.

And that was a sitcom? Spike Brandt: I don't think, at the beginning of the day, either one of us said: "Hey, let's make a sitcom with these characters!" But as more and more got developed, [what] seemed to be working was the stuff where you were really caring about the characters. Ultimately, that really led to this sitcom show being the best way to get deeper into the characters.

Will all the familiar "Looney Tunes" characters be on the show? TC: There are lots of "Looney Tunes" characters, and we like them all, but how do you put the Roadrunner and Coyote in a sitcom starring Bugs and Daffy? It just didn't work. So what we made is a sitcom plus bonus material.
SB: In most of the shows, there's a "Merrie Melodies," which is a musical segment, and/or a [computer-generated] Roadrunner cartoon.
TC: The "Merrie Melodies" segments ... let us do a Pepe Le Pew song, a Marvin the Martian song, a Foghorn and Henery Hawk song, an Elmer Fudd song. That was our playground.

Who were your favorite cartoon characters growing up? SB: I always loved Bugs Bunny and I also loved Daffy Duck. It's a real pleasure to be working with them every day. They really were the top stars in my mind, and it was great when they were both available for the show.

On TV: "The Looney Tunes Show" debuts on Cartoon Network tonight at 8.