WB is Making Yogi Bear: The Movie

Published by Jeff Leins on October 3, 2008

Warner Bros is developing a live-action/CGI hybrid movie based on the Hanna-Barbera cartoon Yogi Bear.  I wish I was kidding.

Directing the endless picnic basket jokes is Ash Brannon, the co-writer/director of Surf’s Up.  The movie will follow the exploits of Yogi Bear and his sidekick Boo-Boo as they outsmart Jellystone’s Ranger Smith. I can’t believe I just had to type that sentence.

Thanks a lot, Scooby Doo.  After that awful movie combined a CGI character with live-action actors, it opened a whole can of CGI worms.  Since then there have been hybrid family movies for Garfield, the Chipmunks, Underdog, and an upcoming Smufs movie.  Now this.  Someone make it stop.

Look, I liked Surf’s Up.  It was a funny, well-made animated movie.  But a live-action/CGI Yogi Bear is just about the worst idea I’ve heard since the Chipmunks live-action/CGI movie.  Then again, that movie made $217 million domestically (the ninth largest movie of 2007), so what do I know?