Somehow I seriously doubt they’re actually currently making similar shows, for one simple reason: TUC, if done faithfully, would seriously undermine the conventions of target age groups for cartoons. I’m not saying this to criticize it’s eligibility, though. I think it’s part of what makes the possibility so exciting.
I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that there’s a really strict dichotomy in the US between cartoons aimed at kids and cartoons aimed at adults in terms of style and content, much more so than in books. (Speaking of which, I’m definitely not an expert on this industry, so sorry if I’m off-base. I’m just someone who likes animation.) I think Suzanne Collins was very adamant that the things she wrote about war and trauma be accessible to young kids, and in order to respect that, an adaption should neither censor the violence nor adapt it to an older audience. For cartoons that’s a weird but intriguing grey area to be in.
Although I do remember seeing somewhere Alex Hirsch talk about how Disney had odd criteria for what was permitted in Gravity Falls. They’d tell him he couldn’t show the kids riding without a seatbelt, but apparently possessed taxidermy oozing blood is just fine. And I guess the reason was they were concerned less with what might be upsetting, and more with what might encourage bad behaviors. Still, the level of violence in TUC would technically make it like TV-14, right? Idk
My point is, it seems like you’d have to find a studio that’s actively interested in bridging the gap between kids and adult cartoons. Like, no fitting it in a box; it is what it is. Maybe it could feasibly be an original on some streaming service? Not Netflix though. I don’t trust them not to cancel it after 2 seasons.
So if I’m making a list of things I’d like to see:
-Same level of violence and heavy themes, and none of the kind of kids marketing that’s designed to sell toys etc. It also feels a little wrong to me to hype up the adventure aspect considering how Gregor is always like get me tf out of here lol. It isn’t fun it’s horrifying. (Horror can still be intriguing and whimsical though, like Coraline.) This is related to the reason I’m pretty sure Suzanne Collins must have refused to let The Hunger Games become a video game—narrative dissonance.
-Gregor and co. being nonwhite, maybe at least mixed race Black on his dad’s side or something
-A sense of humor almost comparable to Avatar: The Last Airbender, which is to say it works inexplicably in spite of what’s going on and it’s very endearing. I mean, that’s how it is already.
-I always thought it would be really interesting to visually distinguish the Underland creatures as species of their own and not just super-sized copies of the animals we know. For example, fliers having stronger-looking and more complex muscle structures and ear/nose shapes that don’t exactly correlate with any real life species. So you’re like, “oh that’s a bat! ... but it looks Different”
-The Underland humans having a very distinct accent and culture expanded on more than it was in the books, even just visually
I don’t have a preference for 2d or 3d. Both look amazing as long as they have their own unique flair
