ThunderCats Ho!

What do you call it when Mr. Krabs meets Ron Stoppable? Well, next month when you see it, you will call it ThunderCats. The 1985 cartoon series is being rebooted with a fantastic voice acting cast, new character designs and story. The new series will premier on July 29, 2011 on Cartoon Network as a 3-part story.

The actors are veterans of the Warner Brothers Animation stable of voice actors. They include Will Friedle (Batman Beyond & Ron Stoppable from Kim Possible) as Lion-O, Clancy Brown (Lex Luthor & Mr. Krabs) as Grune the Destroyer and Kevin Michael Richardson (Robert Hawkins & Martian Manhunter on Young Justice) as Panthro.  Emmanuelle Chiriquí will portray Cheetara who, I hope, will put the egotistical Lion-O in his place more often than Cheetara did in the first series. (And yes, I know Lion-O is a child in an adult’s body.)

There was talk a few years ago about a Warner Brothers CGI ThunderCats movie, but talk of that project seemed to die off rather quickly, probably hastened by the horrible performance of the movie, Speed Racer by the same studio. So while I was never a big fan of this series, the origin story of the original ThunderCats was a good one. I hope the storytelling of this  animated version will be as successful as the original.