Tooned Out!

***Tooned Out!*** is a 2003 American hybrid movie, TBA

## Plot

Dennis Jacob, a 12-year old son of a divorced couple, is presenting his incomplete school paper about a historic event he was tasked to write about. The unamused teacher warns Dennis to finish his paper by tomorrow or face being referred to by his parents. After school, Dennis goes home to an apartment owned by his father, Hal, an unemployed computer scientist who is doing research for his grand invention, a supercomputer called the TBA (TBA) that possesses artificial intelligence with the ability to project virtual reality. After dinner, Hal leaves to gather research on a piece of hardware, leaving Dennis with the TBA. A curious Dennis encounters the TBA and, after being unable to get it to help finish his school work, turns on his TV and starts watching *Zanytoons*.

At that moment, SpongeBob, discovers he has a will of his own and stops responding to the cartoon's controls. Dennis manages to hack into the computer to bring SpongeBob out of the cartoon, becoming capable of interacting with reality. Dennis and SpongeBob form a bond with each other, but SpongeBob's departure from the cartoon ends up causing trouble throughout the real world, destroying Dennis's apartment and causing car wrecks throughout the city. Meanwhile, we are introduced to TBA and his minions, who are preparing to take over the world.

When Hal comes home to see his apartment in ruins, Dennis's mother, Lisa, also stops by and the two start to argue. Dennis attempts to explain what happened but neither believe him, with both blaming him for the mess. Dennis is then taken out of Hal's custody to Lisa's home, where SpongeBob tracks him down. After leaving the house without Lisa noticing, Dennis and SpongeBob find out about TBA's plan, and they devise a plot to stop TBA's scheme by searching for TBA, which are scattered across the real world encased in ordinary rocks. After finding a TBA, SpongeBob uses its power to temporarily gain strength, and SpongeBob gives Dennis a taste of the power of the TBA to help finish his school work, though SpongeBob warns Dennis not to further exploit the TBA's power. At the same time, TBA sets up a shell corporation called Shady Corporation and uses it to purchase the abandoned Ramshackle Amusement Park, renaming it TBAland Amusement Park. He recruits a group of school bullies and roboticizes them into Bullibots. TBA orders the bots to look around the park and find the remaining TBA.

TBA then runs into Hal, who reluctantly accepts TBA's offer to be the park's main research and development designer. Using Hal's TBA technology, TBA develops a virtual reality ride to draw kids to the newly revived theme park. The park opens to huge crowds, with kids all across town attending opening day. However, when Dennis and SpongeBob manage to inspect the ride, they discover TBA is using the ride to turn the kids into his Badbots, calling them Kinder-Bots and forcing them to look around the park to find the TBA. After further inspection, the duo discover that TBA, using the TBA, will program the TBA to turn the world's natural landmarks, such as Mount Everest and the Amazon rainforest, into digital replicas so that he can make virtual reality experiences and profit off of people wanting to see them, so that they wouldn't have to visit the landmarks themselves. The BulliBots catch the duo and a chase ensues, ending with a weak SpongeBob being captured and Dennis barely escaping.

After the chase, the Kinder-Bots return home, being unconditionally obedient to their parents. Dennis hatches a plan to return everything back to normal and send TBA into the cartoon world. The climax has Dennis rescue SpongeBob and the duo battle TBA before Dennis activates the TBA and causes himself, SpongeBob, TBA and the Badbots to enter the *Zanytoons* universe. Another battle ensues, with SpongeBob eventually defeating TBA with Dennis's help. With TBA's plans foiled, he vows to return and escapes. SpongeBob decides to stay in his world knowing that it needs him and a few others to stop TBA's schemes, and bids Dennis farewell before the latter returns home and reunites with Hal and Lisa. The film ends with Dennis promising Hal to remove the TBA, until he sees SpongeBob's eye wink at him at the screen and starts watching *Zanytoons* again.

## Production

### Development

Before being a Zanytoons film, it was a Sonic film. Sega first came up with the idea of a feature-length Sonic the Hedgehog film during production of the cartoon in 1993. Newly-appointed consumer products director Michealene Risley, who was instrumental in green-lighting the series, was assigned to negotiate with several Hollywood producers to find support for the project. "I was basically driving the Sonic movie," Risley recalled to Kotaku in 2018. "I don’t know who came up with the idea – whether it was Tom [Kalinske, Sega of America CEO] or Shinobu [Toyoda, Sega executive vice-president and COO] or me, or we talked about it as a group – but having come from the movie world, I was always pushing those things." Tom Kalinske, however, was hesitant on the idea of a movie, recalling how 1987's Masters of the Universe damaged the namesake toy-line and how the critical and commercial failures of Super Mario Bros. and Street Fighter stained the reputation of their namesake video game franchises. Kalinske noted to Kotaku that "There is really is that fear that a bad movie could potentially hurt your brand. The Sonic brand was strong enough to probably withstand it, but there is that fear." Despite Kalinske's concerns, Sega was highly enthusiastic about the project, according to Risley. "It all depends on the timing of the movie, the look of the movie, whether you go live action or animation. [The film failing] was never an issue for us." After about a year of negotiations, Sega struck a development deal in August 1994 with MGM and Trilogy Entertainment Group, led by producer Pen Densham, with Densham serving as executive producer of the planned movie.

After securing the deal, Sega and MGM tapped Richard Jefferies to help come up with a screenplay for the film. Jefferies had previously written the cult classic The Vagrant for MGM in 1992, and had worked with Risley during her time at Marvel Comics to help write a proposed film adaptation of the Silver Surfer character. According to Jefferies, Sega wanted the ill-fated Sonic X-treme game, which was in development for the then-unreleased Sega Saturn, to tie-in with the movie, adding that Sega was "trying to co-ordinate the two and make the two compatible." Sonic would have also been portrayed through heavy use of computer-generated imagery. Jefferies' treatment contains a number of references to the franchise's games, with a notable example being Josh's school assignment. In it, he writes about a World War II test pilot named Sonic, who was killed in a freak accident when he tried to break the sound barrier. This is a reference to the technical files of the first game that provided Sonic the Hedgehog's original backstory.

Jefferies' treatment was submitted to MGM in May 1995. According to Jeffries, the draft received a positive reception among Sega and MGM executives, but Shinobu Toyoda sent a letter to Kalinske suggesting that Doctor Eggman be removed from the script, favoring a "strong/mean villain" to give the series a fresh idea.

Before the project could be green-lit, MGM suddenly backed out of the development deal, and after an attempt to revive the film at DreamWorks went nowhere, the film was scrapped. It is unclear why MGM chose to drop the film from their slate; Densham claimed the deal broke down due to creative differences between Sega and Trilogy, causing the latter to pull out and leave MGM with the bill. Jeffries, however, blamed "Hollywood politics" for the film's demise, believing that the studios each wanted a higher share of the film's profits. He also suggested that the character had trouble adapting to the decline of the 16-bit console market. "The focus groups weren’t responding to the evolution of the character," Jeffries remarked, "and the heyday of the character was behind them. Maybe they were hoping a movie could help reinvigorate that. But maybe it was a response to where Sonic was headed, and maybe MGM came to that conclusion themselves. I don’t know." Jeffries speculated that the film's budget would've reached around $150 million, making it MGM's most expensive film to date, and suggested that the financial concerns were another reason for MGM abandoning the film.

In 1999, Paramount would pick up the script, retheming it to center around Zanytoons and renamed it to *Zanytoons: Tooned Out!* (later being shortened to just Tooned Out!). Hiro K.O., who's first film at Paramount, *Life in NY* was about to come out, was set as a director, eventually being joined by TBA.

TBA.