Rocky and Bullwinkle at Comic-Con 2014

July 2014 – At the San Diego Comic-Con there was a panel discussion hosted by Leonard Maltin regarding the new Rocky and Bullwinkle feature that will be included in the Oct 14 Blu-Ray release of the Peabody and Sherman movie. The short feature, directed by Gary Trousdale and animated by Dreamworks, is a new 3D rendering of the Rocky and Bullwinkle story.
Peabody and Sherman Blu-Ray Release with Rocky and Bullwinkle

The panel featured both the director and Jay Ward’s daughter Tiffany Ward to talk about the feature, the optioning of Rocky and Bullwinkle with Dreamworks for a possible feature film sometime in the future, as was done with Peabody and Sherman. The panel was primarily filled with remembrances of the series and discussion of the voice actors for the projects. The panel also had a screening of the short feature.

Without divulging the storyline the feature is true to the series, with many cameos from characters from the series and the same mixed level of humor directed for kids and adults. The 3D imagery takes a little time to adjust to as the mental history of the characters and voice is a 2D image, but the Dreamworks multi-camera animation style makes the characters immersive quickly.
Directory Gary Trousdale and Tiffany Ward

In the press briefing, Tiffany and Gary talked about the sound track, music, voice actors – for the feature June Foray returns as the voice of Rocky even though she is in her 90’s. The discussion was mostly on the background of the project and how Gary got selected, and the love of the community for the project. Tiffany discussed how the show came about as a segmented show with multiple character blocks. Originally Jay Ward was creating standard 4-5 minute cartoon features. When he finally got the project idea sold to the network, he then found out it was a 30 min show that needed 22min of content. As he was used to creating, directing and producing 4-5 minute features, instead of changing his whole flow and that of the writers, to meet the schedule he created multiple 4-5 min segments and assembled them into the 22min of content per episode. This worked extremely well with the attention span of the audience, and that is how the show structure came about.

At both the panel and the press briefing, there was a discussion about the Rocky and Bullwinkle statue that was on Sunset Blvd in front of their store. Since they sold the store many years ago, the statue is no longer on the street corner. There was a discussion of working with the city to put the statue back, find a new place in the LA area or move it up to UC Berkeley where Jay Ward graduated from and place the statue there.

The panel was standing room only, and the feature was met with thunderous applause showing that even though the series ended its run in 1964 (50 years ago), the following of the show is still strong.