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Evergreen Media Group has made a deal with Telefeatures to acquire rights to the 1960s cartoon series Courageous Cat. Evergreen is prepping a contemporary live-action/CGI feature with a new mythology for the character, one of only two properties originated by Batman creator Bob Kane that isn’t owned by DC Comics and Warner Bros. Telefeatures syndicated the original cartoon series, which Kane created as a parody of his earlier Batman work. Evergreen has an extensive library of branded intellectual properties in the U.S., with holdings having generated more than $340M in revenues, license fees and/or royalties. The company and co-founder Tony DeRosa-Grund are in postproduction on the James Wan-directed genre pc The Conjuring for New Line. “For years we resisted overtures for the property,” Telefeatures director Debbie Litt said. “However, because of Tony and Evergreen’s longstanding track record of finding great new takes to reboot classic properties we had a significant comfort level in entrusting them with Courageous Cat.”
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I believe the other Bob Kane creation not owned by DC Comics/Warner Brothers is the “Cool McCool” TV cartoon series.
And didn’t both “Courageous Cat” and “Cool McCool” arrive on TV in 1966, the same year “Batman” became a smash hit on TV (with Adam West)??
Courageous Cat was great for it’s time, the late 60′s, when childhood innocence was still around and Saturday Morning TV was all the rage. Why mess with it, update it, CGI it, and destroy its memory and that way it originally was? I am completely baffled why the studios and Hollywood power brokers try to tamper with 60s and 70s kids TV when the result is ALWAYS amateurish garbage at best (i.e., Land of the Lost). What’s next a remake of “Shazam”, “Isis”, and Jason of Star Command?” I now hear that Jim Carrey will be playing Hoodoo in a Lidsville remake. Something is seriously wrong with this town.
So, will the estate of Bob Kane profit from this? Only good reason I can think of to bother basing off of this property.
A new mythology? For a cartoon cat? There was no mythology to this toon. It’s only valuable because they can advertise it as From the Creator of Batman.
Smurf – CGI/Live action = terrific
Alvin and the Chipmunks CGI/Live action = terrific
Kane and Ian Flemming were good friends. Flemming did a parody of James Bond that became Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Not to be outdone Kane did a parody of Batman that became Courageous Cat.
Nothing wrong with a reboot or a reworking of the mythology of the original to contemporize the property. It’s all execution dependent.
Could actually be a fun and cool romp with the right filmmaker.
Not to pull comic book nerd elitism, but anybody familiar with Bob Kane’s history of screwing his collaborators and claiming the credit (and profits) for himself can’t hear the words “Batman creator Bob Kane” without grimacing. (Even KANE’s own account gives clear evidence that Bill Finger was the real brains- so much so that in his final years Kane acknowledged how much he’d wronged Finger…long after such an admission would have benefitted Finger, who died in poverty).
Very true many people never knew about Bill Finger and his contribution to the Batman universe. Stan Lee has also done the same thing to guys like Steve Ditko and Jack Kirby. Stan the Man gets all the publicity while his co-creators are rarely if ever mentioned.
Both of you are correct. Yesterday, I was re-reading about the early comic-book legends. Bill Finger and Jerry Robinson deserve a lot of credit for Batman. And, Kirby deserves the lion’s share of the credit for FF, Hulk, X-Men and other Marvel characters.
Read the article! It was not done with Kane or his estate. They did the deal with Telefeatures the program’s syndicator that held all the rights.
Hearing great things about what these guys (Evergreen) did with James Wan and The Conjuring (Ed Warren life story). Spoke with a guy who did a set visit, says it will be one of the classiest and scariest genre movies to come out in years! If they have that deft a creative touch as it seems they do then they probably are the right guys to reboot this iconic property.
Yawn, more lazy mining of the past. Anybody remember the Underdog movie? I rest my case. I’ve said it before on Deadline and I’ll say it again: the movie biz has become just as boring as the music biz, sampling and desecrating its own history when they should be coming up with new ideas.
I love all the “haters”. Any movie can be good or bad. The previous post is right. It’s all about the execution. Iron Man, Spider Man, Batman, Avengers…they are all examples of mining the past. No one calls those studios LAZY.They call them SMART. Even Alvin and the Chipmunks and Smurfs collectively grossed nearly a billion dollars.
A cartoon with a pedigree to Batman creator Bob Kane. It could be very cool indeed with the right writer and director.
I wait to pass judgement final judgement on the movie till after it is actually done. but for now this has all the earmarking of a very smart move.
I love all the “haters”. Any movie can be good or bad. The previous post is right. It’s all about the execution. Iron Man, Spider Man, Batman, Avengers…they are all examples of mining the past. No one calls those studios LAZY.They call them SMART. Even Alvin and the Chipmunks and Smurfs collectively grossed nearly a billion dollars.
A cartoon with a pedigree to Batman creator Bob Kane. It could be very cool indeed with the right writer and director.
I wait to pass judgement final judgement on the movie till after it is actually done. but for now this has all the earmarking of a very smart move.
Thank you for your very honest and astute comments, employee of Evergreen Media Group.
I wish I worked for evergreen. Just a little smarter than you are about branded properties.
Who out there didn’t love Courageous Cat and Minute Mouse?