Recap: 'Peter Rabbit' / 'Pets 2' / Porky Pig

Bunnies, dogs, and pigs... It's an animal recap! And each news story's subject begins with a "P"... Letter of the day, perhaps.

First up... A trailer for Sony's Peter Rabbit has surfaced from the soil...


Peter Rabbit is basically the next Goosebumps for Sony Pictures Animation. Goosebumps was of course a live-action film with lots of CGI and VFX stuff, and for a long while, it wasn't billed as a Sony Pictures Animation production. Given that Sony Animation sat 2014 out and only had one release in 2015 (Hotel Transylvania 2), it somewhat made sense. Peter Rabbit falls more in line with their current work, anyways. It has a cute CG animal star, whereas Goosebumps had CG monsters and stuff.

Anyways, the Olive Bridge/Animal Logic production is going to be branded as a Sony Animation production. Releasing February 9th in the states, the first teaser is here...


Not much to say. It's Peter Rabbit trying to get his jacket on, making a crack about not needing trousers, and a reminder that James Corden is voicing him. As I've said before, I really don't care for live-action hybrids like this. The kind where everything is live-action except some cartoony CG animals. And I liked movies like Paddington, but to me, you either go all in or don't go at all. The film does have a strong cast and might be fine in the end, but on the whole, this one still doesn't quite interest me. I see it as a film Sony Animation's taking some credit for, not a full-on Sony Animation film. For me, their next film is Hotel Transylvania 3. July 2018.

Speaking of July releases...


Illumination, for some reason, is bowing out of the 4th of July week with their next sequel. The Secret Life of Pets 2, which was previously set for 7/3/2019, is now opening on June 7, 2019. Two weeks before Pixar will unleash Toy Story 4, which will surely be ginormous. The Secret Life of Pets, like the first Despicable Me, was a big hit that was almost something of a sleeper. The question is... Will the sequel repeat that success? Go even higher? Or go a little lower?


Most animated movie sequels, in terms of ticket sales, don't outsell their predecessors. A rare case of an animated movie sequel outdoing its predecessor by a wide margin was Despicable Me 2, and the first animated sequel to do that since Shrek 2 in 2004. Despicable Me 2 was a huge smash, collecting $368 million domestically. The Secret Life of Pets made around the same amount, and that wasn't even a sequel or established IP. I have a feeling Secret Life of Pets 2 will still be big, but it won't touch the gargantuan gross of the first film. It'll see the normal sequel decline...

Either way, they're heading for the summer, which is no shock. Illumination only has one movie set for next year (The Grinch in fall 2018), and Pets 2 is their only 2019 release. Sequels Minions 2 and Sing 2 sit in 2020, and untitled pictures have been set from 2021 to 2023. I bet a good chunk of those are going to be sequels and Dr. Seuss adaptations.

In the end, they'll make some serious coin on it...


For a little while, it seemed like Warner Home Video was going to be pulling out of the cartoon collection market. Given the state of physical media and studios' concerns, it seemed like Warner was going to move on. Prior to that, Warner Home Video has mostly been unbeatable in this field... The three Looney Tunes Platinum collections were comprehensive and jam-packed, while the first - and sadly, only - volume of the Tom & Jerry Golden Collection was pretty tip-top. Aside from a few sizable hiccups, they've been great with this sort of thing. A few non-Blu collections also surfaced over the years, ones definitely worth picking up.

A few years back, Warner Home Video began offering some titles online. They've been using a strategy known as "MOD," short for "Manufacture On-Demand." Basically, this means that WHV won't produce mass amounts of copies of a particular release, rather, they'll list the release on their site, you order it, they make it. Manufacture On-Demand. It's quite an idea, and I'd like to see more studios get behind this if they're hesitant to release certain things on disc. (Disney, I'm looking at you.)

So far, the MOD plan has given us DVD releases of obscurities like Twice Upon a Time, Cats Don't Dance, and most recently, Batman: Mask of the Phantasm on Blu-ray. Now, they'll be offering a 5-disc... I repeat... A 5-disc DVD set centered around the first Warner Bros. breakout cartoon character, none other than Looney Tune Porky Pig!


101 Porky Pig shorts... Commentaries by renowned cartoon historians... All of it in chronological order, and the majority of the cartoons are in black-and-white. Many of the included shorts were previously unavailable on home media, and some of them haven't been shown on TV in a while. Historian Jerry Beck notes on his Animation Scoop website that the sales could convince Warner Home Video to not only keep up the cartoon collections, but also convince them to pursue more "ambitious" projects. The first number of DVDs will also be pressed traditionally, so be sure to scoop them up on the Warner Bros. Archive and let your collector voice be heard.

Anyways, it's good to see WHV continuing making good, collector-oriented cartoon sets in this day and age. Since they have a vast library, they might as well. Disney for some odd reason is holding out on Silly Symphonies sets, Mickey Mouse and friends cartoons, various TV programs, etc. Even on streaming and such. Universal? What have they done for Walter Lantz's cartoons recently? List goes on, but Warner Bros. is consistently and surprisingly good at this kind of thing. That is, when they're working around their legal department, which is roughly 85% of the time.

Th-th-th-th-th-that's all folks!