Fred Seibert Talks "Samurai Jack" Movies

[wayshway]

When I first met Fred Seibert, the man had just launched the careers of John Kricfalusi and Klasky-Csupo at Nickelodeon. He had previously worked at MTV, where he was instrumental on such shows as Liquid Television, Peter Chung’s Aeon Flux and Mike Judge’s Beavis & Butt-Head .

It wouldn’t be long before he became the studio head of Hanna-Barbera Studio. The hot projects on his agenda were titles like Two Stupid Dogs and SWAT Kats, with Dark Water in the works. Although I didn’t know it at the time, he had some young bucks with names like Genndy Tartakovsky, Butch Hartman, Craig McCracken, Paul Rudish and Dave Fleiss toiling away at this studio as well as an up and coming voice artist named Brad Garrett.

These days he runs one of the most successful independent TV animation studios in the country, Frederator. His productions include Hartman’s Fairly OddParents and Wow! Wow! Wubbzy!. In fact, I would say you’d be hard pressed to find any one single person more responsible for launching the careers of young animators outside of Matt Groening than Seibert.

As reported last week, Seibert is now about to take on a new challenge. Frederator has plans for not one, but three, new movies, among them the highly anticipated Samurai Jack, with Tartakovsky at the helm. He’s got some other things in the hopper, too, but you’ll have to read on for those.

I was very pleased to say that he called me back within an hour of my placing my initial call. Shows you some guys remember you even after they’ve gone on to way bigger and better things. Here’s what Seibert had to say:

Newsarama: What motivated you to do feature films?

Fred Seibert: You know, I’m a producer. So I’m always looking for things to do. I’m also always looking for challenges to pursue. Part of that is looking for marketplaces that I feel are not being fulfilled.

NRAMA: How do you feel the animated feature film business is not being fulfilled? The talk recently was of a glut.

FS: Yes. But they were all $100 million-plus productions that are produced one way.

NRAMA: You mean with the CGI orientation.

FS: Which is also a particular kind of CGI. To me that’s like saying the only movie that should be made are Matrix movies. The truth of the matter is I know the marketplace likes Sideways and Little Miss Sunshine as much as it likes Lethal Weapon 7.

There’s nothing wrong with the movies always coming out except it seems that they are the only movies coming out. Animation, which is already a ghetto-ized form to begin with, had a lot of neglect going on, and that made me annoyed.

NRAMA: Could one of your inspirations be the Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie, which despite its legal problems and expenses, made money?

FS: To be honest with you, we’d been planning this out for years. But the guy who runs Adult Swim is a very close friend of mine, and we think very much alike.

NRAMA: Are you talking about Mike Lazzo?

FS: Yeah. I launched my animation career at Hanna-Barbera the same time with him at my side at Cartoon Network. Frankly, I wouldn’t have done anything I did without his explicit approval and enjoyment. After all, I was the person who gave him the permission to use Space Ghost for the Coast To Coast shows. So we go way back.

Another thing is we have a similar but not exact way of thinking. He was the executive that green lit Samurai Jack to begin with.

NRAMA: Now let’s get one thing straight. You made this wonderful announcement that Samurai Jack is coming back, but I assume it’s still a Cartoon Network property, not Frederator. How do you divvy up the rights?

FS: They continue to own the property. We licensed the film rights from them. We’ll see where the business takes us after that.

NRAMA: Did you have any problems getting Genndy Tartakovsky back in the saddle?

FS: No. In fact, one of my inspirations was knowing that Genndy had opened a feature film production company Orphanage Animation.

NRAMA: I never knew The Orphanage was Genndy himself.

FS: That’s actually Genndy in partnership with animators in San Francis

[rmehta2]

I can't wait to see the movies...the show needed a proper ending. This was one of my favorites from the old Cartoon Network schedule.

[wayshway]

quote:Originally posted by rmehta2

I can't wait to see the movies...the show needed a proper ending. This was one of my favorites from the old Cartoon Network schedule.

This show was cool. I can't wait to see it too.