{"id":419841,"date":"2026-01-17T21:02:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-17T21:02:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/419841\/"},"modified":"2026-01-17T21:02:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-17T21:02:07","slug":"warner-bros-developing-a-speedy-gonzales-movie-with-the-book-of-lifes-jorge-r-gutierrez","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/419841\/","title":{"rendered":"Warner Bros. developing a Speedy Gonzales movie with The Book Of Life’s Jorge R. Gutierrez"},"content":{"rendered":"

Warner Bros. Discovery\u2019s stewardship of the\u00a0Looney Tunes\u00a0brand has been, to put it mildly, a little rough. Since it merged itself into being back in 2022, the David Zaslav-run company has frequently seemed to work aggressively to distance itself from the classic animation brand, shopping its library of classic cartoons off to Tubi<\/a>, writing off<\/a> HBO Max-intended films like Coyote Vs. Acme\u00a0for tax purposes, and selling distribution rights for\u00a0Looney Tunes\u00a0movies\u2014including\u00a0The Day The Earth Blew Up<\/a>, and the eventually, begrudgingly revived<\/a> Coyote\u2014off to much smaller companies like Ketchup Entertainment. All of which makes it slightly surprising to learn that the company\u2019s animation studio, Warner Bros. Pictures Animation, is now embarking on a full-fledged film centered on murine speedster Speedy Gonzales, developed and directed by\u00a0The Book Of Life<\/a>\u2018s Jorge R. Gutierrez.<\/p>\n

This is per\u00a0THR<\/a>, which notes that Gutierrez\u2014who\u2019s spent the last few years under an overall deal at Netflix, which produced some animated sequences and a now-canceled movie co-written with comedian Gabriel Iglesias,\u00a0I, Chihuahua\u2014began teasing the possibility of the film last month. Now it\u2019s official, with WBPA president Bill Damaschke stating that, \u201cWe couldn\u2019t be more excited to have [Gutierrez] reimagining Speedy Gonzales, one of our most beloved Looney Tunes characters, for today\u2019s global audience.\u201d<\/p>\n

Originally created in the 1950s\u2014where his first \u201cofficial\u201d short actually won the Oscar for Best Animated Short Film\u2014Speedy most recently appeared in film in 2021\u2019s Space Jam: A New Legacy, where he was voiced by Iglesias. Warner Bros. previously attempted to develop a film version of the character in the 2010s, with\u00a0The Book Of Life\u2018s Eugenio Derbez in the role; in an interview in 2024<\/a>, Derbez suggested the project was killed off by studio worries that it was \u201cpolitically incorrect,\u201d part of a long-running argument about whether the character constitutes a harmful ethnic stereotype. \u201cThe only ones offended are the Americans,\u201d the Mexican actor asserted, \u201cBut we love Speedy Gonzales. He\u2019s smart. He outsmarts the cats. He\u2019s a hero. He gets cheese for his people. He\u2019s fast.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Warner Bros. Discovery\u2019s stewardship of the\u00a0Looney Tunes\u00a0brand has been, to put it mildly, a little rough. Since it…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":419842,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[64,63,134,344],"class_list":{"0":"post-419841","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-movies"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419841","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=419841"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419841\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/419842"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=419841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=419841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=419841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}