Ketchup Entertainment Picks Up N. American Rights To ‘The Day The Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie’
The saga of at least one Looney Tunes feature in limbo – The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie – has reached a happy conclusion in the United States, with Ketchup Entertainment announcing that they have picked up North American rights to the film and will distribute it theatrically. A release date will be announced later.
The hand-drawn 2d film’s fate fell into question after Warner Bros., which produced the film, decided that it didn’t want to release it any longer. In an unconventional move, WB farmed out global rights sales of the film to the European distribution company GFM Animation, which in turn has had success selling the title across multiple territories and countries.
Readers can be forgiven if they haven’t heard of Ketchup, the distributor that secured U.S. rights; neither had we. Despite the company’s limited track record with distributing theatrical animation, it has been around for 13 years and has released live-action features like Michel Franco’s Memory and Ben Affleck-starrer Hypnotic. This fall, it will also release Hellboy: The Crooked Man, as well as another animated feature, the environmentally-themed Ozi, Voice of the Forest.
In a statement, Ketchup CEO Gareth West said, “The Day the Earth Blew Up is an historical moment for the Looney Tunes franchise, and we are proud to be partnering with Warner Bros. Animation to bring this film to audiences theatrically. We cannot wait for audiences of all ages to experience one of the smartest animated films in recent years.”
The Day the Earth Blew Up stars Daffy Duck and Porky Pig as they try to save the world from an alien invasion plot. It premiered to a strongly positive reaction at the Annecy animation festival a couple months ago. Just last weekend it launched theatrically in Germany, where it landed in the #10 spot with 82,800 euro (Usd$90,461).
Peter Browngardt, who developed and produced the new Looney Tunes Cartoons shorts series as well as created Uncle Grandpa, directed the film.
Key credits include Eric Bauza, Candi Milo, Peter MacNicol, and Fred Tatasciore as lead voice actors, Alex Kirwan (supervising producer), Nick Cross (art director), Aaron Spurgeon (production designer), and Browngardt and Sam Register in the role of executive producer.
Uniquely, Browngardt acknowledged the board artists for the film’s writing, which is why the film credits sports a longer-than-usual list of writers. They are Darrick Bachman, Pete Browngardt, Kevin Costello, Andrew Dickman, David Gemmill, Alex Kirwan, Ryan Kramer, Jason Reicher, Michael Ruocco, Johnny Ryan, and Eddie Trigueros.
Ketchup’s push into the animation space is part of a growing trend in the U.S. theatrical marketplace. On last week’s livestream, we discussed the surprising number of independent and niche theatrical distributors that are releasing features in U.S. theaters this year. Besides the usual suspects like Gkids, Crunchyroll, Viva, which put out multiple films annually, other distributors in 2024 include Sideshow and Janus Films (Gints Zilbalodis’ Flow), IFC Films (Adam Elliot’s Memoir of a Snail), and Blue Fox Entertainment (Neil Boyle and Kirk Hendry’s Kensuke’s Kingdom).
