Revival of Audience Love for Calvin and Hobbes
Created by Bill Waterson, Calvin and Hobbes is a beloved serialised comic strip that enraptures the innocence of a boy and his friend as they discuss everyday topics that curious kids themselves would find them asking. From 1985 to 1995, the comic revolved around Calvin, a boy and his adventures with his imaginary anthropomorphic tiger Hobbes. The traits that make Calvin and Hobbes adaptable to the various forms of media is that the story world itself is enriched with regular and adventurous stories focusing on the duo with the supporting characters providing strong identities that enable future opportunities of narrative ventures. The iconography of Calvin and Hobbes is very identifiable with its art style, maintaining its integrity of the IP. The spirited nature of the adventures they go on allows fluidity across multiple media platforms. The initial road blocks of the franchise pitch was the question of how we are going to recapture the original audience’s love of Calvin and Hobbes and make them want to re explore the world and its characters. We realised we need to expand on what Watterson had already created and not reboot the property, which could have verse effects from the original audience being disappointed on how we redirected the media. The main audience and target demographic for Calvin and Hobbes as well will be children and also those who grew up with Calvin and Hobbes and now have children of their own, in which these people would now be aged anywhere from 30 - 40 years.
The overall mothership of the Clavin and Hobbes franchise pitch was to create a feature length film to drive the story world of the franchise. Having Taika Waititi direct this feature was an obvious choice as he has a very distinct comedic attitude towards films and has demonstrated a vast knowledge of how to both work with kids and to create films that both parents and their children can watch together while having both parties enjoy the film just as much. The film will be distributed by Warner Bros animation group and will be a mix of both live action and CGI, with Calvin and the world being real and Hobbes being completely CGI with Nick Offerman being the voice actor. The core text of the film will revolve around the central characters of Calvin and Hobbes set 10 years after the date of the last comic strip on one of their big adventures. The films world will be continued from Calvins early teen years to acknowledge the lapse of time from the last comic in 1995. This also provides and opportunity to expand the story world by creating other mediums that explore the gap in-between the times.
An animated series will also be created which will be distributed and created by Cartoon Network and premiered on Warner Media’s upcoming streaming service HBO Max. Following the films release, this animated series will act as an interquel between the final 1995 comic and the 2020 feature film. Each episode themselves will follow a different character in an effort to expand on the story world of Calvin and Hobbes. Our audience research showed Calvin and Hobbes fans are keen to explore not only Calvin and Hobbes but also the supporting characters also. Along side the release, there will also be a documentary film created which focuses on the comic strips inception rather than focusing on Watterson himself. The acclaimed documentary filmmaker Ken Burns who is regarded for making documentaries solely using archival footage and imagery along side narration. This will work to benefit the film and its spirit while also crediting Watterson himself. The film itself will have a small theatrical release and then soon after will be released onto HBO;s streaming platform HBO Max when it launches.
A similar property that Calvin and Hobbes relates to and has also gained critical acclaim is the character of Paddington which was first created in 1958 in the book A bear called Paddington. Paddington recently released its first feature film which gained audience and critical acclaim by utilising and capturing the fans appreciation of the character. Another property which had huge success by the introduction of a live action film mixed with CGI characters was the movie Christopher Robin, which is based of the Winnie the Pooh franchise.
A video game application will be made in order to promote the world of Calvin and Hobbes. Originally, two games were going to be created, a mobile application and a home console video game. However after reading our audience research, we discovered that majority of the people were more interested in a mobile application than a console game. We then came to the conclusion that we will focus only on the mobile application. The game will be based off the last panel of the original comic strip with Calvin and Hobbes riding on their sled shouting “Lets go adventuring”. Story themes and aspects from the film and tv series will be introduced while also implementing variations of playable characters such as having comic strip or live action version characters being playable. This enhances the world of C&H; while also intertextually linking the platforms together and allowing for the consumer to explore the other platforms having been introduced to some of their themes.
A social media twitter page will be made in Hobbes name in order to promote the film and the other transmedia properties. Hobbes was chosen to be the focus character as the survey research showed that majority of people view Hobbes as their favourite character from the strip. The account will also serve to provide insight into behind the scenes action and will also respond to peoples questions regarding the Calving and Hobbes story world. The profile itself will utilise the participatory culture of social media by allowing people to interact directly with Hobbes.
Finally a 52 page, full watercolour collection of brand new Calvin and Hobbes comic strips will be published and released. This new comic collection will strive to pick up from where the original ended. It will be used to further explore themes such as environmental issues and technology questions. It will be done using humour as a method of conveying complex issues for both children and adults amusement while also subtly educating them.
