Adam Wingard’s long-awaited ThunderCats feature film has received a hopeful development update. The Godzilla vs. Kong director first announced plans to adapt the iconic 1980s animated series back in 2021, though progress on the project was stalled as other major productions took priority.
In an interview with Polygon, Wingard confirmed that the live-action adaptation of ThunderCats is not dead. During the interview, the director said, “My career’s kind of bouncing around, so different things have taken precedence. But [ThunderCats is] still kicking around. I think it’s just a matter of finding time to really re-concentrate and re-engage with it.”
He added, “We did a new draft at the beginning of this year. It wasn’t too long ago, and then things got put on hold for this movie [Onslaught]. So I don’t really have any exciting updates. But it’s not dead. It lives. It’s just not the number one [thing] I’m working on right now.”
Since its initial reveal, progress on ThunderCats was paused while Wingard directed Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire and prepared his upcoming action-thriller Onslaught for A24.
The complicated history behind the ThunderCats movie
The adaptation of the animated TV series was first announced by Warner Bros. and Wingard on March 29, 2021. The movie was described as a “big-scale feature.” Screenwriter Simon Barrett, who collaborated with Wingard on Godzilla vs. Kong, joined the director to pen the screenplay.
However, this was a “dream project” according to Wingard. The director added that he wrote a 272-page screenplay about the cartoon during high school. “My real obsession with ThunderCats came in high school. The pinnacle of me deciding I wanted to be a filmmaker,” Wingard previously told Deadline.
In addition, Wingard added that he wanted to approach the live-action as a “new type of fantasy sci-fi spectacle film that people have never seen before.” He said, “I want to do a ThunderCats film that takes you back to that ’80s aesthetic. I don’t want to reinvent the way they look; I want them to look like ThunderCats. A hybrid CGI film that has a hyperreal look and somehow bridges the gap between cartoon and CGI.”
While the project remains in active development, further timeline updates have yet to be revealed.
