OT: Should there be a new animated Dr. Seuss special?

[speedy fast]

I've been thinking, with the recent movie adaptions of Dr. Seuss stories, many of which people think are bad, does anybody think that some more should be made into animated specials? It seems like there haven't been any new specials since Daisy-Head Maisy in 1995, and that seems to have been the only Dr. Seuss special made since his death.

While I haven't seen any of the old Dr. Seuss specials besides How the Grinch Stole Christmas, I remember most of them well (I can't remember much about The Boober-Bloob Highway), and they were all really good. I wonder if there are any other Dr. Seuss books that would make good specials.

[A. Flea]

I hope you mean hand drawn. Beacuse his last live action (The Cat in the Hat) amd his last digital (Horton Hears Who?) were not impressive. Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, another Suess picture won't be very good. Besides, with the way hollywood is about live action films now, I wouldn't bother.

[speedy fast]

Yes, I mean hand-drawn, not live action or computer animated, and I mean a 30-minute television special. Though a few years ago I read the book The King's Stilts, and thought that would make a good live-action movie (though in my mind, I wouldn't have made it very cartoony like the live-action Grinch and Cat in the Hat movies, but looking more dark like the book).

[J. J. Hunsecker]

I don't know which books are left that haven't been used for half hour animated TV specials, but I get the feeling that a new one wouldn't be very good. Most likely it would be shipped off to Korea to be animated, and the results would look poor.

[Joe H]

I don't know which books are left that haven't been used for half hour animated TV specials

Was "Yertle the Turtle" used yet?

[J. J. Hunsecker]

According to imdb.com, there was an animated special based on Yertle the Turtle (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0214311/) in 1977. I've never seen it, so I don't know anything about it.

[nickramer]

I heard there were plans of doing a film base on "Oh the Places You Go" and I think that would work considering the fact that the studio (Henson) had a creature shop and did some memorable fantasy projects like "The Storyteller".

They end up doing a traditional puppet TV show instead which I thought was pretty good and it felt like Fraggle Rock. Well, the first version of it that is. Will Ryan was involved with the first version of the show.

The second version was disappointing since it had a standard structure theme instead of telling a whole story. Here's some information of it: http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/The_Wubbulous_World_of_Dr._Seuss

[Matt the Y]

The initial Seuss-based special, "How the Grinch Stole Christmas", from 1966 was more than enough for me. All the others since then have been nowhere near as good, passable at best ("Horton Hears a Who" from 1970, "The Cat in the Hat" from 1971), God-awful catastrophies at worst ("The Cat in the Hat" starring Mike Myers from 2003). That said, I think we need to give Dr. Seuss adaptations a rest for a little while. There is still something to be said for his stories in their original book form, after all.

[David Gerstein]

The problem isn't Dr. Seuss adaptations per se—they don't have to be bad. The problem is the producers/writers of the adaptations deciding to improve on Dr. Seuss, usually by larding up the story with Mary Sues or dull, predictable "family entertainment" cliches. Apparently, everybody and his sneetch has always wanted to write Dr. Seuss fanfic. Authorized adaptations shouldn't be the place to do it, IMHO, but I'm not calling the shots...

Unfortunately, the process began with Seuss' own teleplay for the original animated Cat in the Hat adaptation. The Cat, once a lively, cheerful mischief-maker with all kinds of fun up his sleeve, became a depressive character who only made his mess under the pretense of finding his missing "moss-covered three-handled family grudunza." His entire personality changed—was I the only disappointed viewer as a kid?
I can only imagine that Seuss' extreme, unnecessary revision of his own classic functioned as a green light for others to do the same thing.