Sunday’s Animation Panels at Comic-Con@HOME

Sunday’s Animation Panels at Comic-Con@HOME

July 26th, 2020

Jackson Murphy

The final day of San Diego Comic-Con at Home has brought us two major animation panels. Here are the highlights:

On August 21st, Netflix will be debuting the new adult animated sports comedy series Hoops, about a high school basketball coach and his team in Kentucky. Ben Hoffman is the show’s creator. “Hoops was born a long time ago. We made the Pilot – and it sounds like a joke – five years ago. I had a show on Comedy Central that was not well-received and cancelled quickly, and I wanted to follow that up with something with my reaction to that experience, which was anger and frustration and screaming and yelling. So I created this show.”

Hoffman continued, “In fact I’ll tell you how far back it was: Phil Lord & Christopher Miller were interested in my Pilot and wanted to work on it. And they said they had a new movie coming out called The LEGO Movie. And I said, ‘Sounds good, but I don’t know that a movie about LEGOs was really gonna hit.’ I never saw the movie. Heard good things. And I said, ‘You know what? Let’s work on this together.’ So they’re EPs on this as well.”

Jake Johnson (also an EP) voices Coach Ben. “He’s a really angry guy. This [show] started a lot of years ago, and Ben came to me with the Pilot presentation. And the idea was we were gonna be really disgusting in the booth and everyone was gonna pass on it. We just thought it’d be really fun to make something that we really thought was funny without any fear because it was just a presentation that MTV was putting behind. And they passed on it. We loved it and we hung onto it. And then when Netflix came around, we got a second chance. So we were able to hand-pick all this unbelievable talent. We wanted to pick the funniest people we could find and make the funniest show we could.”

Moderator Max Greenfield (Johnson’s friend and co-star on New Girl) said, “This is the filthiest show I’ve ever seen. If it wasn’t animated, I think it would be really hard to watch.” Hoffman’s response: “That was actually how it became animated. Phil & Chris were like, ‘[We] love the script, but if you do this live-action you’ll never work again.’ They said, ‘This could actually work animated.’ So I said, ‘You know, with my zero years of animation experience, I’m in.”

And to wrap-up SDCC@Home 2020: HBO Max’s Looney Tunes Cartoons. Bob Bergen, the voice of Porky Pig, spoke first about the importance of voicing, and the legacy of, these iconic WB characters. “We don’t take it for granted. This franchise is a pleasure, and this particular show is beyond a pleasure.”

When moderator Damian Holbrook from TV Guide asked the panelists if they now feel like the “gatekeepers” of these characters, here’s what Eric Bauza (the voice of Bugs & Daffy) said: “I feel like just for the time being. But it changes all the time. Not one particular reimagining or reboot is the same as the next. But what remains the same is the integrity of the characters and the characters themselves. The situations might be different, but I feel like as long as the performers are told to be these characters that we’ve known since the 1930s and ‘40s, that’s the most important thing.”

Executive Producer and Showrunner Pete Browngardt added, “I grew-up a huge fan as part of my life – one of the reasons I got into animation in the first place. I always thought to myself: Why would you ever change it? And why aren’t they still just making shorts? I feel like the characters lend themselves to short story format and short gag cartoons.”

And one of the treats of this LTC panel: the debut of a new short. “Postalgeist” stars Porky & Daffy as they attempt to deliver a package to the “Terror Inn”. It’s a fun way to serve as the conclusion of this unique Comic-Con experience.

I’m glad that SDCC still happened this year virtually – and that I was able to bring you the top moments right here on Animation Scoop. Hopefully it will be back to an in-person event next year. But as cool as that is: to be honest, allowing everyone the ability to watch these star-studded, truly interesting panels (and see exclusive content) for free online… sounds like something that would be crazy to trade.

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Jackson Murphy

Jackson Murphy is a movie critic and entertainment columnist. He is the creator of the website Lights-Camera-Jackson.com, and has made numerous appearances on television and radio.

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