Tom and Jerry Director of Roger Rabbit’s Influence of the film

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Hanna-Barbera’s iconic animated characters, Tom and Jerry, after delighting audiences with their brutal cat and mouse for over 80 years, are reviving to make the most of their debut film in the 21st century as part of the animated / live action film, Tom & Jerry, which airs on Friday, February 26. Directed by Tim Story (Fantastic Four, Ride Along), Tom & Jerry featuring the intimidating titular duo inside the walls of a posh New York City hotel. The human team that bears witness to the riot, as part of this lively adventure (a la Who Framed Roger Rabbit?), Includes Chloë Grace Moretz, Michael Peña, Rob Delaney, Ken Jeong, and Colin Jost at SNL. Throw in some tracks from A Tribe Called Quest, Eric B. & Rakim, and other hip hop greats, and Tom & Jerry is ready to take Manhattan by storm when he appears both in theaters and on HBO Max.IGN spoke to Tim Story about working with legacy cartoon characters, bringing these famous liberties into a mixed-action animation world, and how Roger Rabbit provided the perfect template for comedy, drama, and action for a world where people and animated characters work together to be in amazing harmony. “[Who Framed Roger Rabbit?] was the main one I went back and studied, ”Story explained.“ I have to admit, in the world we were trying to create, something that not many hybrids have done lately , that is to try to recreate the 2D animation with ‘human world’ or ‘the real world,’ and that is exactly what we were trying to do. We wanted to make sure that we always kept those two places, as you might say, separate and let them have their own rules. So that was the main thing. “

“And then the next thing I went for was the original shorts,” he said. “I went back and watched most, if not all, of the original Hanna-Barbera summaries and that’s the kind of place where I left it. I think that was pulling from Roger Rabbit as a whole is just kind of right on point, for what I needed. “

Tom & Jerry isn’t the first time Story has changed famous characters for the screen, having released the two films Fantastic Four in 2005 and 2007, but it was a real opportunity for him to have a chance in the film Tom and Jerry. Jerry. “He gave me everything I love about him,” he said. “You can do comedy and then you can give me two characters that I literally grew to watch and those characters take them with them and bring them into this world. It allowed me to do physical comedy. It allowed me to do a little bit of action. I could take a few winks at things like Batman. I only had a ball to do it. There’s even Silence of the Lambs. “

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But getting the world of this movie okay, though, where people hit the cartoon animals (in reality where all the animals are animated), he was introduce some tinkering and experimentation. “I felt very early on that this world might be a little silly but still established,” Story said. “When I find those combinations in movies, it’s really appealing to me.”

“You have to try some kind of stuff,” he continued. “There were things we tried that we found out a little too much. There were things that we tried where we felt like we were being a little too rational and we had to accept the zaniness of cartoon animals. But luckily there was an amazing team that understood what we were doing and understood how to make it fun without losing the simpler truth.I have to give that to the participants I was out there helping to make the film. We were just always trying. “

“This is the kind of comedy world to some extent, and family movies, where you just have to sort of figure it out as you go along. You have a lot of theories. There were a lot of things that we thought. which might try or we thought that might work.And then there are other things that we thought ‘no, that’s too crazy’ but then you found ‘oh wow, it worked out perfect. So it’s just kind of a trial and error. But being in this place many times before, there is a comfort that I will find with it. “

Tom & Jerry hits select theaters on Feb. 26, with a one-month streaming release at HBO Max.

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