Aug 16, 2021

Warner Bros. did not want the "Tom and Jerry" movie to be about Tom and Jerry, the writer says

When Warner Bros.'s hybrid feature Tom & Jerry came out earlier this year, many critics lamented that there wasn't much of Tom and Jerry themselves in it. That was very much by design, according to writer Pat Casey.

Speaking on The GHZ Podcast (listen here), Casey, co-writer of Paramount's Sonic the Hedgehog movie and its upcoming sequel, recalled a meeting with the producers of Tom & Jerry:

Casey contrasts this with his and co-writer Josh Miller's approach on Sonic. Told by the studio that Sonic needed a human friend, they introduced local sheriff Tom (played by James Marsden), who teams up with the hedgehog in a kind of buddy-cop setup.

But they were clear on where the focus should be: “We were like, 'This has to be a movie about Sonic.' We didn't want to do a movie that was about a human and Sonic was just a wacky sidekick.”