Warner Bros. Animation

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Logo used since the 2010 rebrand

**Warner Bros. Animation** is an American animation studio which is part of Warner Bros. Entertainment, a subsidiary of AT&T's WarnerMedia. The studio is closely associated with the *Looney Tunes* and *Merrie Melodies* characters, among others. The studio is the successor to Warner Bros. Cartoons, the studio which produced *Looney Tunes* and *Merrie Melodies* cartoon shorts from 1933 to 1963, and from 1967 to 1969. Warner reestablished its animation division in 1980 to produce *Looney Tunes*–related works, and TBS merged with Time Warner (now WarnerMedia) in 1996.

In recent years, Warner Bros. Animation has focused primarily on producing television and direct-to-video animation featuring characters created by other properties owned by Warner Bros., including DC Comics, the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer cartoon studio (via Turner Entertainment Co.) and Hanna-Barbera Productions.

## History

### 1970–1986: Restarting the studio

The original Warner Bros. Cartoons studio, as well as all of Warner Bros.'s short subject production divisions, closed on October 10, 1969 due to the rising costs and declining returns of short subject production. Outside animation companies were hired to produce new *Looney Tunes*-related animation for TV specials and commercials at irregular intervals. In 1975, Warner Bros. Cartoon alumnus Chuck Jones began producing a series of *Looney Tunes* specials at his Chuck Jones Productions animation studio, the first of which was *Bugs and Daffy's Carnival of the Animals*. These specials, and a 1975 *Looney Tunes* retrospective feature film titled *Bugs Bunny: Superstar* (distributed by United Artists, the previous owner of the pre-1950 Warner Bros. library), led Jones to produce *The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Movie* for Warner Bros. in 1979. This film blended classic *Looney Tunes*/*Merrie Melodies* shorts with newly produced wraparounds of Bugs Bunny introducing each cartoon. Warner Bros. responded to the success of this film by reestablishing its own cartoon studio.

Warner Bros. Animation opened its doors on March 15, 1980 to produce compilation films and television specials starring the *Looney Tunes* characters. The studio's initial head was Hal Geer, who had been the original studio's sound effects editor during its final days, and he was soon joined by Friz Freleng, who left DePatie–Freleng (which became Marvel Productions after being sold to Marvel Comics), and returned to Warner as executive producer. The new wraparounds for *The Looney Looney Looney Bugs Bunny Movie* (1981), *Bugs Bunny's 3rd Movie: 1001 Rabbit Tales* (1982) and *Daffy Duck's Fantastic Island* (1983) featured footage by a new Warner Bros. Animation staff, composed mainly of veterans from the golden age of WB cartoons, including writers John Dunn and Dave Detiege.

By 1986, Freleng had departed, and Hal Geer also stepped down the following year. Geer was briefly replaced by Steven S. Greene, who in turn was replaced by Freleng's former secretary Kathleen Helppie-Shipley, who would spearhead a major revival of the *Looney Tunes* brand in the years that followed. The studio continued production on special projects starring the *Looney Tunes* characters, sporadically producing new *Looney Tunes*/*Merrie Melodies* shorts for theaters such as *The Duxorcist* (1987), *Night of the Living Duck* (1988), *Box-Office Bunny* (1990), and *Carrotblanca* (1995). Many of these shorts, as well as the new footage in the compilation film *Daffy Duck's Quackbusters* (which includes *The Duxorcist*), were directed by Greg Ford and Terry Lennon, as well as Darrell Van Citters.

## Filmography

List of Warner Bros. Animation productions