Boop is back, baby

By William Hughes  |  February 12, 2016 | 12:35am
Aux Features Fleischer Studios

In a news story that classic animation fetishists and diehard Who Framed Roger Rabbit? fans have been waiting on for decades, Deadline is reporting that Betty Boop is coming to TV. France’s Normaal Animation—also responsible for a series of Peanuts shorts that ran on French TV in 2014—has been tapped to bring the macrocephalic animation legend and pioneer in the field of “cartoons that try to give people boners” into the 21st century.

Normaal is partnering with Fleischer Studios, where Boop was created by founder Max Fleischer in 1930, for a 26-episode animated series, set to debut in 2018. The series will presumably attempt to update the baby-talking flapper character—who starred in dozens of animated shorts and specials throughout the ’30s, most of which were packaged for TV syndication in 1955 and VHS distribution in the ’80s—to the modern era. It’s a daunting task that’s been tried before; efforts for a Betty Boop movie were undertaken in 1993 and 2014, never to much success. Her last actual film appearance was in 1988’s Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, where she appeared to make some sadness-tinged references to her past animated glory.

 
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