VIDDY WELL, LITTLE BROTHERS, VIDDY WELL: On March 7th, Deadline Hollywood reported, “Pepe Le Pew Won’t Be Appearing In Warner Bros’ ‘Space Jam’ Sequel:”
He starred in the first Warner Bros. Space Jam movie back in 1996, however, Pepe Le Pew will not be showing up at all in the upcoming theatrical sequel Space Jam: A New Legacy on July 16.
With the Looney Tunes French skunk besieged by controversy in the wake of New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow slamming that the cartoon character “added to rape culture,” Deadline has learned that a hybrid live-action animation scene between Jane the Virgin actress Greice Santo and Pepe Le Pew, shot back in June 2019 for Space Jam 2 was left on the cutting room floor.
The Pepe Le Pew character will likely be a thing of the past across all media. Warner Bros. also has no current TV series featuring the skunk and there are no plans to have him appear on Looney Toons, Bugs Bunny Builders, Tiny Toons Looniversary or future projects, sources confirmed to Deadline.
Flash-forward to this today, with the Hollywood Reporter noting, “’Space Jam 2’ Trailer Delights Fans with Robust World of Warner Bros. Characters.” Including those family-friendly favorites…the Droogs from Stanley Kubrick’s brilliant, chilling, and at times repulsive 1971 film, A Clockwork Orange, which was Kubrick’s first film for Warner Brothers:
From It’s Pennywise to the flying monkeys from The Wizard of Oz to the droogs in A Clockwork Orange to an agent from The Matrix series, there was plenty to spot. There even appeared to be Mr. Freeze from Batman & Robin.
As Comicbook.com adds, in an article headlined, “Space Jam 2 Includes A Clockwork Orange Cameos, for Some Reason:”
If you’re not familiar with Stanley Kubrick’s 1971 classic, A Clockwork Orange adapts Anthony Burgess’s 1962 novel about Alex, a teenager dedicated to a subculture based on “ultraviolence.” Malcolm McDowell plays Alex in the movie, and in the film’s notorious opening sequence, he and his friends commit acts of wanton violence and rape. It seems odd to include characters from this film — which received an X rating upon its initial release in the United States before being edited down and re-released with an R — in a movie that will, at worst, receive a PG rating.
Look, the kids seeing this movie probably won’t notice the A Clockwork Orange characters while watching this story about cartoons playing basketball with monsters. Even if they do, they have no frame of reference. And yes, there are other characters from adult-focused properties like Game of Thrones and Mad Max in the movie. But the Night King and the War Boys are cartoonish villains that wouldn’t be out of place in a work of children’s fiction. Alex and his droogs are something different.
I can’t speak to Charles M. Blow’s role in cancelling Pepe Le Pew – a Timesman waking up in the morning and deciding to write a column on why a semi-beloved Looney Tunes cartoon character is the epitome of “rape culture” is a bit odd. But it is uber-woke New York Times and Charles “stick that in your magic underwear” Blow we’re talking about.
But the cancelling of Pepe and the inclusion of the Droogs in a movie for kids is making the whole thing start to feel like Warner Brothers is taking a page out of Nike’s publicity playbook. Recall the sacrificial “Betsy Ross flag sneakers” that Nike rolled out in 2019, only have their spokesman Colin Kaepernick publicly denounce during run-up to the Fourth of July. As I wrote at the time, “I think Kaepernick was used as a tool (in every sense of the word) by Nike’s social media and PR gurus to help give the brand maximum attention over the week building up to the Fourth of July.” In the short term, it was a brilliant, albeit cynical piece of marketing,” resulting in Nike’s stock going up by two percent as a result of all of the publicity.
And yes, I’m adding to Warner’s publicity by writing about the Pepe/Droogs kerfuffle. But it is remarkably odd to see the Clockwork Orange droogs, who were the epitome of rape (and looting and killing) culture appear in the Space Jam 2 stands after Pepe was tossed down the memory hole.
