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Bugs to return in new Looney Tunes movie

The Associated Press
Tuesday June 11, 2002

LOS ANGELES – Bugs is coming back, doc. 

Warner Bros. announced plans Monday to produce a new feature film starring Bugs Bunny and fellow Looney Tunes cohorts Daffy Duck, Tweety Bird and the scenery-chewing Tasmanian Devil. 

“Looney Tunes: Back in Action” will combine those animated characters and others with live-action backgrounds and performers, much like the 1988 Disney comedy “Who Framed Roger Rabbit.” 

It’s the first feature film for Bugs and the gang since 1996’s “Space Jam” with basketball star Michael Jordan. 

Brendan Fraser, best known for “The Mummy” and its sequel, will star in the new film as a man who encounters the cartoon creatures in Hollywood, Las Vegas and Africa while searching for his missing father and an ancient treasure. 

“Gremlins” filmmaker Joe Dante has signed to direct the comedy. 

In addition, several new Looney Tunes cartoon shorts will be created to run before other feature movies, said Lorenzo di Bonaventura, president of worldwide production for Warner Bros. 

The studio started in the animated-short business in 1930, when it released the first Looney Tunes short, a parody of Disney’s Silly Symphonies titles, but in recent years the cartoons have been limited mainly to television.