Nickelodeon Developing Roger Rabbit-Like Film Featuring NickToons Characters

Jill Pantozzi | January 27th, 2016

NickToons is a new feature film product being developed by Viacom’s Nickelodeon and Paramount Pictures. Please let it be all I’m already imagining.

Deadline compares the project to 1988’s Who Framed Roger Rabbit, a classic that not only mixed animation with live action, but Disney characters with Warner Bros. Looney Tunes gang. Though it’s unclear from their report whether or not that’s exactly the kind of thing we’ll see in NickToons it will definitely feature show crossovers.

They write, “Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon have set Jared Hess to direct NickToons, a feature that he’ll write with Jarusha Hess, his wife and writing partner on films including Napoleon Dynamite and Nacho Libre. Producing will be Disruption Entertainment’s Mary Parent and Cale Boyter.”

The pic is based on an idea by Ali Mendes, who works for Parent at Disruption Entertainment. Mendes grew up loving the characters and hatched the idea to bring them together. Anybody in their 20s, or their parents, won’t need a primer for the signature Nickelodeon characters that will be part of the film at this point: Rugrats, Ren & Stimpy, Rocko’s Modern Life, Aaahh! Real Monsters, and The Angry Beavers.

It’s unclear if Deadline actually knows those exact shows will be in use for the film or if they’re just flexing their knowledge of the last 25 years of Nick history but the door is wide open to countless possibilities. I don’t know enough about the rights of any of the shows but we could potentially also see Doug, Hey Arnold!, Invader Zim, or CatDog. Dare I even mention The Legend of Korra? SpongeBob already got his own movie (which Parent produced) but it would be silly for them not to include those characters as well.

Here’s hoping, when all is said and done, this isn’t my review.