Yahoo News Long-gestating “Rugrats” movie crawls forward with “SNL ”alums and CGI babies
Hold on to your diapers.
The Rugrats are crawling back to the big screen.
A new live-action feature film iteration of the beloved '90s Nickelodeon cartoon is in development at Paramount, Entertainment Weekly can confirm. Saturday Night Live cast member Mikey Day and SNL head writer Streeter Seidell wrote the screenplay, while Pitch Perfect filmmaker Jason Moore will direct.
Nickelodeon / Courtesy: Everett
Tommy, Phil, Lil, and Chuckie in 'Rugrats'Variety reported that the film will feature CGI toddlers Tommy Pickles, Chuckie Finster, and Phil and Lil DeVille interacting with an otherwise live-action world, akin to recent family movies like Pokémon: Detective Pikachu and Sonic the Hedgehog. And while more difficult tasks have been successfully executed by Hollywood's best and brightest, it remains challenging to imagine any photorealistic rendering of the titular toddlers that would not look profoundly disturbing next to real-life humans.
Related: See the voices behind your favorite Rugrats characters
A live-action Rugrats movie was first announced in 2018, with Family Guy and Futurama writer David A. Goodman writing the screenplay and an original release date of Nov. 13, 2020. Diary of a Wimpy Kid filmmaker David Bowers quietly announced that he'd direct the film in 2019.
Paramount launched a CGI revival of Rugrats on Paramount+ in 2021. After a 24-episode season, the series was renewed for a second season that premiered in 2023. The series was unexpectedly pulled from the service earlier this year.
Related: Watch Rugrats original cast recreate fan-favorite lines: 'I'm a big brave dog'
The original Rugrats series aired for nine seasons from 1991 to 2004 on Nickelodeon. The show also spawned a sequel series, All Grown Up, that ran for five seasons on the same network between 2003 and 2008 after a pilot movie in 2001.
Everett
Chuckie and Tommy in 'Rugrats'The franchise has previously released three theatrical films: 1998's The Rugrats Movie, 2000's Rugrats in Paris: The Movie, and 2003's Rugrats Go Wild, which crossed over with The Wild Thornberrys.
Related: Rugrats creator talks Chuckie's mom, Passover episode
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Nickelodeon's vast library of cartoons from the 1990s and 2000s have only seen a handful of theatrical movie adaptations, and they've yielded wildly mixed results. 2004's The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie grossed $141 million on a $30 million budget and is generally beloved among the series' fans, and the 2015 follow-up The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water made even more at the global box office — $325 million — on a significantly larger budget.
On the other hand, M. Night Shyamalan's 2010 live-action adaptation The Last Airbender is almost universally reviled by the animated series' massive fan base, though it still managed to gross $319 million on a $150 million budget. And 2019's Dora and the Lost City of Gold ultimately made a soft landing despite positive reviews, earning around $120 million on a $49 million budget.
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