"Hey! Yo! It's Lion-O! He's the bravest ThunderCat that you'll ever know!"
Andrew Lloyd Webber composed these lyrics for ThunderCats, a musical intended for the Broadway stage. The intent was to build off of the success of his hit production, Cats, but to target a younger audience.
Before Julie Taymor directed the award-winning Lion King Musical, she cut her teeth on this project based on the popular 1980s Rankin-Bass animated series, ThunderCats. The stage show featured elaborate, avant-garde costumes representing the colorful characters living on the alien world of Thundera. Actor Ron Perlman starred as Lion-O. The character Snarf was represented by an actor manipulating a Banraku puppet.
Ok, so I made all that up.
ThunderCats Live! was an arena stage show promoted in 1988, probably much like Walt Disney's World on Ice show, but without the skating. Wouldn't you like to see that? I bet you'd want to see it if Gumby, Pokey, the Street Frogs, Karate Kat, the TigerSharks and the Silverhawks were also involved.
This ad is from the Winter 1988 issue of Muppet Magazine (with Jason Bateman on the cover!).
I didn't know that Lorimar produced all those shows. They were also the studio behind The Waltons, Eight is Enough, Dallas and Knots Landing.
ReplyDeleteTokyoMagic!: Things get really confusing because Warner Brothers purchased Lorimar in 1989. That's how WB owns ThunderCats these days (I think?).
ReplyDeleteOkay, so my jaw was dropping for the first three paragraphs. I was like "How have I never heard of this before?!"
ReplyDeletePeyton, as I wrote this, I actually got to thinking that this could work as a real musical. :-)
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