Steve Carell to star in new Looney Tunes movie from the writers of X-Men: First Class

There are a number of pop-culture landmarks that have a different effect on people depending on how old they are. For example, younger people will generally be more tolerant of latter-day Simpsons episodes because they grew up with them, while older people are too worried that they’ll be dead soon to laugh at Homer getting another wacky new job. However, no pop-culture landmark is more divisive than 1996’s classic/terrible Space Jam, the movie where Michael Jordan taught Bugs Bunny how to play basketball. People born after, say, 1986 think it’s a legitimately good movie, while people older than that see it as a nonsensical mishmash of R. Kelly songs, sports drama, and cartoon antics.

This divide will inspire Internet debates until the end of time, and that’s free advertising that Warner Bros. can’t possibly ignore. That’s why it’s taking another shot at the classic/terrible premise of a live-action human guy hanging out with animated Looney Tunes characters. Unfortunately/fortunately, this new project probably won’t feature any sports drama or R. Kelly music, but it might star Steve Carell. This comes from Variety, which also reports that the film—simply titled Acme—will be written by Ashley Miller and Zack Stentz, the duo behind X-Men: First Class.

We don’t know anything about the plot, and Variety even notes that the idea of it being “a hybrid film with a mix of live-action and animation” is only an assumption at this point, so those Space Jam comparisons might end up being totally irrelevant. Surely that news is terrible/meh, depending on whether or not you still have the old Space Jam website bookmarked. Our understanding way back in 2010 was that this movie would focus solely on the Acme corporation and wouldn’t feature Bugs Bunny and the gang at all, but that makes about as much sense as a show about Gotham City that doesn’t have Batman in it.