
The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie is the first original fully animated Looney Tunes film to get a wide theatrical release. Porky Pig and Daffy Duck have to rescue Earth from an alien invasion. It is a truly hilarious film with equal parts nostalgia mixed with modern-day humor and technique—an ode to the classics and a worthy addition to the legacy of this beloved franchise. Well-known writer, director, and animator, Peter Browngardt directed this truly silly and fun film which played briefly in select theaters and is opening wide early next year. Browngardt recently spoke with Immersive via Zoom.
[This conversation has been edited for clarity and length]
How did you first get involved with this as a feature?
After doing 5 seasons of Uncle Grandpa at Cartoon Network I was looking for my next gig. Warner Brothers Animation had reached out for a different project so I met them for lunch. I turned the project down but mentioned that I’d be interested in doing a Looney Tunes short, which they were receptive to.
The studio was planning on bringing Looney Tunes back at the time. We ended up doing 209 shorts and while we were in production they asked are if I had any ideas for a movie. My pitch was essentially, what if Ed Wood made a Looney Tunes movie?
Thats amazing… I love Ed Wood and of course the Tim Burton film… How long did it take to complete this, from development to animation? And what animation techniques did you use?
This all started in 2020, it’s all a blur now but I know we did the final lock on February 2nd, 2024. We used a wide variety of animation techniques. We used Wacom Cintiq Screens which we physically drew on. We even had some animators working on paper and we scanned and then cleaned up in the computer. We used Harmony Animation Software which is very modern and that is where most of our 2D animation was done.

What, would you say were some of the biggest challenges of this? Was there any point where you thought like… I’m never gonna finish this.
Yeah, we were dead ducks like three times. After some corporate restructuring, our film was on the chopping block but luckily we were saved. We were one of the cheaper projects, I think… And I think the quality of our work saved us. Our team did an amazing job.
What happened when it was finished was it was supposed to go to streaming. We shopped it to streaming and we got turned down and I thought, we can’t sell the movie. Nobody wants to take a risk. It was a bad time in Hollywood. The strike was going on. It was, it was rough. Ketchup Entertainment, saved the film.
Tell me about how you started working with Eric Bauza.
Eric Bouza is not only an exceptionally gifted voiceover artist, he just loves this stuff. He loves animation. He started as an artist and got recognized for his impersonations of cartoon characters while he was working as an artist. I cast him in my series, Uncle Grandpa. We both did voices on that and during breaks, he would do all the Looney Tunes voices for me. I think he’s the best since Mel Blanc.

Any particular favorite scenes in the film?
I like the Farmer Jim stuff. I thought that the character really came across well. An audience favorite.
I love Farmer Jim, so funny and worked well story-wise too.
We wanted to sell the audience on their history and their sense of home and family. They should be on a farm. They gotta have some kind of parental figure. A farmer. And I just remember going, how about we call him Farmer Jim, where we were writing the script and it was just like Farmer Jim. We all laughed like, okay, Farmer Jim.

That’s cool. What’s it like being on the other side of this now?
Just to have any association with the juggernaut that is the Looney Tunes and the history that it serves in the world of entertainment.
Looney Tunes helped define comedy in so many ways. So many people were inspired, uh, comedically and also musically from this. They are part of our, our culture and the history of this planet. They speak to all cultures and just to be associated with that greatness and the great artists that came before me,
I’d say to the crew we are standing on the shoulders of giants like, you know, Chuck Jones and Tex Avery, and just hope to keep balancing and hoping not to fall off their shoulders. Just if we can just stay balanced and stay true. I worked in television for so long, it’s just amazing to get to make my first movie and for it to be a Sci-fi Looney Tunes film is pretty surreal.
The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie will be released in theaters on February 28, 2025