Like our modern industries returning to the primitive, pulley-and-wisecracking-animal systems they were based on, today’s most successful comedians continue to return to The Flintstones. The latest are Will Ferrell and Adam McKay, who have signed on to reboot the classic Hanna-Barbera cartoon for the big screen—only a few years after Seth MacFarlane abandoned his ambitions to do the same on television.
As with MacFarlane’s scrapped version, Ferrell and McKay hope to scrub away the memories of Rosie O’Donnell dancing to The B-52s by returning the franchise to its animated roots, hiring The Campaign screenwriter Chris Henchy to shoulder alone a bronto-rib-sized burden that nearly crushed some 35 writers on 1994’s The Flintstones (to say nothing of the poor, lost souls of 2000’s The Flintstones In Viva Rock Vegas). No word yet on what sensibility this new, feature-length Flintstones cartoon is aiming for, but with Ferrell and McKay aboard as producers, all that improvisation is bound to put at least a few animators in the hospital.