Back to the Drawing Board: The Live Action "Jetsons" Movies, Part 3

Part 3: "The Jetsons in Viva Rock Vegas" or "Would Astro Have Been an Animatronic or CGI?"

Well, we've made it to the third script for the live action Jetsons movie that never got off the ground. It's been quite a roller coaster, hasn't it? Judy falling in love with Technicolor Jet Screamer lookalikes, references to Jerry Lewis, George becoming a villain with telekinesis bent on world domination, Elroy getting kidnapped, talking rabbits, Jane's bosses having the hots for her... who knows what bizarre situations this draft of the script will put the Jetsons in? Let us get started!

The sun rises over the Jetsons' house, filled to the brim with curvy furniture and angular fixtures that probably wouldn't have looked as neat in live action as it did in a cartoon. An alarm goes off, and the house springs to life. The coffeemaker brews a pot as a table and chairs rise from the floor. George and Jane are asleep in their bedroom. Jane wakes up first, heading into the bathroom so a machine can do her hair and makeup. George is still sleeping, so Jane presses a button that makes the bed lift up and launch him into a shower filled with hot water. Dear lord, Jane, are you trying to cook George like a lobster?

Jane presses another button that makes Judy and Elroy's beds slide into the wall, which is a less-than-pleasant way of waking THEM up. Astro wakes up on his own. Everybody gets ready to start the day - Astro gets a bath, Judy's closet dresses her in a miniskirt and go-go boots (I don't think she ever wore go-go boots in the cartoon, but hey, neither did Daphne...), Elroy eats some food pellets (the future must suck if you only get to eat pellets for every meal) - and everyone is too busy to eat with George. Hmmm, it would seem that in this script, it's everyone else who's too busy to spend time with George, not the other way around. I do wonder if this will lead to George deciding the family is growing too distant and planning a surprise vacation so they can all get closer together.

Jane's index finger is glowing like E.T.'s - she dubs this "Space Finger", something you get from pushing buttons all day. She's working too hard, and the solution to this is NOT having the kids help out with the housework (why don't YOU help out with the housework, George? Lazy bum) but rather to get a robot maid. George initially doesn't want to do it, but all Jane has to do is bat her eyes at him and he just can't say "no". So it's off to the mall, which you have to drive through an asteroid belt to get to.

When they get to the mall, Elroy rushes off to the arcade, where he plays some sort of weird motion-capture version of Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots, with him and another kid puppeteering the robots with mechanical suits. Judy meets up with some "Eisenhower-era poster children", among them her new boyfriend Waldo Cogswell. George hates Waldo, mainly because he's the son of his boss' arch-enemy. We'll see if Mr. Cogswell plays a big part in this script too.

Oh, and I'm fully convinced that the name of Judy's boyfriend being "Waldo" is a reference to Janet Waldo, her voice actress. I wonder if they would have had her make a cameo somewhere in the film, too... would've been more respectful than replacing her with Tiffany.

Or maybe the scriptwriter is just a big fan of this guy.

At a store called "SEARS AND ROBOT", George and Jane look at the robots for sale, but they're all too gosh-darn expensive. George asks a salesman if they have "some kind of bargain bin... with floor models... bruised demos... stuff in the back that nobody wants". Sure enough, they do - Rosey, who was discontinued ten years ago. She works, and she's cheap, so George says they'll take her. This Rosey has quite the potty mouth, saying the word "hell" three times. This was intended to be a kids' film, right?

Did you know that in the original 1960s run of The Jetsons, Rosey
only appeared twice? She became more prominent in the 1980s revival.

We then cut to Elroy's second grade class, where they're learning some complicated algebra equation... here's a fun fact for you: after you graduate, you never actually use algebra at any point in your life. Unless, I suppose, you work in a bank. If you don't, math class was likely a waste of time.

Meanwhile, George arrives at work. They do the "car folds up into a briefcase" gag, then it's revealed that here all George has to do is press a button to turn on a robotic assembly line. On the one hand, this sounds like the easiest job ever... but on the other hand, wouldn't you very quickly become bored? Mr. Spacely appears on the video monitor to shout at him, then we see him and Mr. Cogswell playing golf. Question: why would you play golf with somebody you mutually despise?

Then again, Mario frequently goes go-karting with Bowser...

Back home, George watches an ad for Spacely's Sprockets, portraying them as the greatest thing ever and comparing Cogswell Cogs to Hitler (no, really). George dubs the ad "too subtle", then reaches for his drink... which lifts into the air and then pours itself all over George, the result of Judy turning on an anti-gravity box. George goes to Judy's room, where she, Waldo and a bunch of other teenagers are dancing to "Eep-Opp-Ork-Ah-Ah" - clearly this was written by folks who watched the original show. George turns off the anti-gravity box and reminds Judy of the "no anti-gravity dancing on school nights" rule. If her friends want to stay, they can play a nice game of charades in the living room.

Next, the script throws in an explanation as to why Astro can talk - again, I don't think we NEEDED an explanation as to why Astro can talk, but whatever. Here, Elroy has built some sort of device that allows Astro to speak. Elroy asks George to read him a bedtime story, to which George agrees, but when he opens the book, an electronic periscope emerges and clamps onto Elroy's head, and then a mechanical voice starts reading the story to him instead. If this is what the future is going to be like, we heavy readers are in trouble.

While he and Jane are getting ready for bed, George laments that he thinks they're all getting too reliant on machines. I often fear the same thing... why do you think we're so worried about companies using AI? Jane insists that "it's just a few appliances that make our lives a little easier". Yeah, that's how it starts. Just as Jane is about to kiss George, Rosey emerges from the bathroom and tells George not to worry so much about gadgets. Maybe he'd feel better if he saw a professional shrink (she has a pretty funny line here about her cousin being an elevator in a medical building)...

George pays a visit to the shrink that Rosey reccommends, Bob Brain: a robot with a big goofy egg-shaped head, spinning tape reels for eyeballs, and a mouth full of colorful blinking lights. "Everywhere I look all I see are buttons," George says. "Sometimes I wish I lived in the past - you know, like back around the 1990's... when people sat around the fireplace, telling stories, exchanging ideas, sharing a hug..." Bob Brain says that the correct response is "relaxation and a mild sedative".

Relaxing might be hard for George, however, because Spacely and Cogswell are in the middle of a getting-people-to-buy-our-crap war. Spacely reduces the price of Sprockets to $200 (still seems like a lot of money to me, but you know how inflation works...), so Cogswell reduces the price of Cogs to $150 each, to which Spacely reduces the price of Sprockets to $125. Eventually, George pays a visit to Spacely's office while he's being threatened by a woman who he owes money to and tells him that he went to K-Martian (get it?) before work and saw that Cogs were the Blue Light Special - they're only one hundred bucks!

"A hundred bucks?! That's IMPOSSIBLE! I can't beat it!" Spacely moans. "I know..." George concurs. "There's no way on Earth to make Sprockets at that price." That gives Spacely an idea - they'll farm it out to a planet with lower wages. Like Pluto, for example. Soon he's got a sweatshop set up where the Plutonians - balls of fur with arms and eyes, probably what happens when an Ewok barfs up a hairball - assemble Sprockets. Very sloppily.

At Spacely Sprockets, a tour group is being led around by a robot. Just as George is trying to explain how Sprockets are made, Spacely tells him that the first shipment of foreign-made Sprockets (only ninety-nine cents) has arrived. When George holds one, he notices that it's "flimsy and tinny". The parts bend and the lighted center is brown. He tells Mr. Spacely that there's something wrong with them, but Spacely claims that it's "just the fluorescent lighting". I do hope this, and the fact that the tour group is snatching them up like Beanie Babies, doesn't come back to bite him in the rear later on...

When George gets home, he is asked by Astro if he smelled any nice synonym for "butts" that begins with the letter "A". Dear lord, why is there so much foul language in this script? I know The Jetsons wasn't made exclusively for kids, but it didn't have characters cursing. Anyway, George then offers Rosey some of the new Sprockets, but she dubs them crap, easily snaps one in half, and demands that George keep them away from her. Astro agrees. George is indignant, declares that he will not take orders from "a dog and a tin can", and starts putting Sprockets in all the devices in the house. How much are you willing to bet that this will lead to WHACKY SHENANIGANS?

That night, strange noises emerge from all the devices. Outside, a guy whose wife earlier put one of the new Sprockets in his jetpack is spinning out of control. And in the morning, George and Jane discover that their alarm clock has let them oversleep. Instead of taking George to the shower, his bed drives him up to the window. He winds up flashing all of Cleveland... the Jetsons live in Ohio now? I thought they lived in Colorado.

Something weird is going on. The machine that puts Elroy's clothes on him dresses him in a frilly pink dress. Judy's makeup machine makes her look like Groucho Marx. A chair goes haywire, dragging Jane through other apartments. George is walking Astro on the treadmill, only for it to subject him to a recreation of the "JANE, STOP THIS CRAZY THING!" gag from the show. Yep - there is indeed something wrong with those new Plutonian Sprockets. Maybe the Plutonians sabotaged them to get revenge on us Earthlings for saying Pluto wasn't a planet anymore.

George rushes to Spacely's Sprockets, yelling "I gotta stop 'em! I GOTTA STOP 'EM!" But as soon as he gets there, he sees dozens of giant delivery trucks head out in all directions. Unaware of the chaos that is about to ensue, Mr. Spacely and his wife celebrate in their office. George runs in and tells Spacely that the new Sprockets are dangerous. Spacely's response to hearing that George's son was wearing a dress and that he was standing naked in a window? "Sounds to me like you need a family therapist." He thinks that the new Sprockets are perfectly safe - heck, he even loaded them into all of HIS robots that morning. Cut to Spacely's mansion, which promptly explodes.

"For once, please don't be stupid! JUST LISTEN TO ME!" George begs. Word of advice, George - if you want your boss to listen to you, it's probably not a great idea to call him stupid. Indeed, Mr. Spacely feels insulted and points out that the name of the company is SPACELY'S Sprockets, not JETSON'S Sprockets. "Nothing could possibly go wrong..." he claims. And as we all know, when somebody says that nothing could possibly go wrong, it's a guarantee that something - ANYTHING - will indeed go wrong.

All around the world, people are buying Sprockets and shoving them into whatever devices they have. Cogswell is sobbing that he's ruined. George pays another visit to Bob Brain, who very bluntly tells him that it's his fault this mess is getting started and dubs him a jellyfish. Why is he acting like this? Because HE'S got one of the Plutonian Sprockets inside one of his eyes. In fact, seemingly everything mechanical in the world, with the possible exception of Rosey, has a Plutonian Sprocket in it. And you know what THAT means...

Robots, flying motorcycles, microphones, and even electronic belt buckles are going berserk. The floating disks that Elroy and his friends use in spaceball - a version of basketball in this script as opposed to baseball - have Plutonian Sprockets in them, too, which leads to all the boys... and George, when he tries to save Elroy... getting stuffed into the basket. This is a gag that, at the risk of repeating myself, probably wouldn't have worked as well in live action as it would have in animation. How on Earth could they have stuffed a bunch of child actors, plus whoever would've been cast as George (apparently they wanted Chevy Chase) into a basketball net?

As everyone leaves after the game, a boy from Elroy's class throws one of the Sprockets at George. "SPROCKETS SUCK!" people start shouting. The Jetsons wisely make a run for it. Meanwhile, Spacely gets a call from a very smug-looking Cogswell, who tells him to check out Channels 5, 8, 17, and 23. When Spacely does, he is bombarded by reports about the pandemonium and how it's all being traced back to those Sprockets. It's hard to tell who's more miserable, Spacely or George. Not helping is that Judy, so humilated by her father's working for the company that is destroying the world (insert joke about whatever corporation you hate here), is thinking about changing her name. Suddenly, KA-CHUNK. The car has a "fuel failure" and hurtles downward. George frantically restarts it, and the engine starts working again - but now the steering wheel has locked. The car starts spinning insanely, zigzagging around skyscrapers, ricochets straight into a drive-in burger stand, and smashes through the cart of an Italian guy selling "fresh fruit pellets". Eventually, George yanks an emergency switch that causes a parachute to pop up and let the car gracefully float down towards a landing platform... that a gust of wind blows them away from. Now they're heading towards the Earth's surface, much to everyone's horror. Jane says that it's inhabitable, and rumor has it that it's full of monsters. Hopefully they're FRIENDLY monsters, like the ones on Sesame Street.

The car lands on the Earth's surface, and upon seeing what it's like down there, the Jetsons scream. It's a post-apocalyptic wasteland full of things on fire, mutated beasts, and toxic waste!

Nah, I'm just kidding. It's a beautiful forest with rich green meadows, wildflowers, and bubbling brooks. But since the Jetsons have never actually SEEN any of these things, they're freaked-out. This is an interesting twist, although it does make the future seem a lot less pleasant than Hanna-Barbera intended it to be. Who wants to live in a place without grass?

George bravely opens the car door and says that they need to find a way back up. As soon as they get out of the car, Elroy steps in a mud puddle and panics, thinking that the mud is attacking him. Jane mistakes a waterfall for bad plumbing, when a leaf lands in Judy's hair she acts like it's a spider... then they all hear something moving in the brush and freeze. The "something" turns out to be that most horrifying of creatures, a cute little deer. The Jetsons scream and run for their lives.

Eventually, they find a cluster of poles in a meadow. "Look! CIVILIZATION!" Elroy exclaims. As it turns out, these poles are where the garbage from the Jetsons' high-in-the-sky world winds up. George gets the idea to start climbing one of the poles back up. In the background, monkeys start jumping on the car. Okay, why the heck are there wild monkeys in Ohio? I mean, aside from "because monkeys are funny, nyuck nyuck nyuck"...

The only monkey I'd be okay with having show up in a Jetsons movie is THIS one.

George doesn't know why the car went crazy - he removed the Sprockets, and even replaced them with Cogs. Elroy suggests that maybe the Sprockets are like a virus. Maybe if you take them out, the machines are still infected. Or maybe Cogswell has started having his Cogs made on Pluto too.

In the city, everything is chaos. Moving sidewalks aren't working, and apparently nobody remembers how to walk. The supermarket has run out of pellets. Somebody stumbles out of a public bathroom and says, "You do NOT wanna go in there!" - a rare example of toilet humor actually working. What else can go wrong? Well, inside an appliance store, Bob Brain is enlisting the help of hair dryers and vacuum cleaners. "They built us... but that doesn't mean they're BETTER than us. They're erratic. We're composed. They're stupid. We're smart. Humans lack the logic that makes us superior!" he snaps. "Why take orders from a cretin?" Yes, now all the machines are going to rise up against humanity. Nice going, Mr. Spacely. You've brought upon the apocalypse just because you wanted to make Sprockets cheaper. Though this is kind of Cogswell's fault, too.

The Jetsons have managed to climb up back to their house, where they are greeted by Astro and Rosey. Jane goes to the kitchen to get a glass of water, but according to Rosey, all of the appliances have left - but since they rescued her from the scrap heap, SHE'S not turning her back on them. And here I thought it was just because she didn't have any Sprockets put in her.

At the White House, the president is talking to his cabinet about the situation. All of their landing equipment has failed, so they can't receive supplies, which sucks because Earth hardly has any domestic production anymore... milk comes from the Milky Way, meat comes from meteors, and chicken comes from Zacky Farms (it relocated to Neptune because of a tax subsidy). The president says that it's time to start pointing fingers and basically tells them to bring him the head of Cosmo Spacely. This might be difficult since none of their equipment works, but the president isn't going to let that stop them...

Y'know, Bill Clinton was president when this draft was written in 1996. Do you think they would've had him play the president? Probably not, but it's a pretty amusing mental image. Ironically enough, Bill DID make an appearance in a movie released in 1996 - First Kid! Never heard of it? Neither did I until I looked at Bill Clinton's IMDB page.

According to Rotten Tomatoes, it was pretty bad.

In the city, Mr. and Mrs. Spacely stagger along, disheveled and exhausted. They see government types putting up signs dubbing Mr. Spacely "public enemy number one". He'd probably be even more freaked-out if he knew that every machine, appliance, device, robot, and gadget is gathered in an auditorium to hear Bob Brain tell them why they should take a page from Bender's book and kill all humans. "My friends, we needed an opportunity - and that is NOW!" he declares. "Sprockets have gone bad! It is time we start the REAL INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION!"

This was supposed to be a picture of Bob Brain and his appliance army, but
to be honest, it looks more like Bob Brain having a yard sale...

The Jetsons, meanwhile, have returned to a simpler way of life. The rooms are lit by candles. George gets out a box of his great-great-grandmother's stuff, which is a time capsule of sorts (among the things in there is a t-shirt with "IMPEACH PRESIDENT CLINTON AND HER HUSBAND" written on it). Eventually, George finds a cookbook. Yes, the Jetsons are actually going to cook for themselves. Only problem is, Jane and Judy have no idea what they're doing - when the recipe says to "sauté in drawn butter", Judy takes out a pencil and literally starts drawing butter. The result: a grey, grisly mess. But when they eat it, they find that it actually tastes pretty good.

After that, George destroys the coffee table to make kindling for a fire in the fireplace. Instead of using fancy-schmancy technology, they're sitting by the fire and talking to each other. Maybe you should do that with YOUR family, too, instead of sitting here reading my blog. Then, when it's Elroy's bedtime, George gets to read him an actual bedtime story. Jane wonders if not having technology isn't such a bad thing after all...

In the morning, Bob Brain and his army of machines begin their attack on the city. Y'know that Futurama episode where the robots all go crazy and rise against people because Mom pressed a button that made them? It's basically that. Fortunately, Waldo manages to escape in his space buggy as evil water coolers push people into cages. Bob Brain calls up the president and tells him to surrender. The president begs for them to work out a compromise, but Bob Brain simply has his chandelier attack him.

Can you imagine this thing pushing somebody into a cage?
I don't know if that mental image is disturbing or hilarious...

The Jetsons are safe in their house with enough food for three weeks. Waldo shows up and, as soon as Judy lets him in, plants a smooch on her lips, much to George's outrage. In fact, George initially doesn't want Waldo to hide out with them at all, but Waldo says that the machines have captured his father - they're all in the same boat. George apologizes to everyone and says that he should've stood up to Spacely. "I'm a moron! I spent my life making Sprockets, and I don't even know how they work!" he groans. As it turns out, Elroy does: there's two concentric rings, with the inner one producing a negative charge and the outer one producing a positive charge. Then there's a glowing green diode in the center. There. Now you know how Sprockets work. Don't say you've never learned anything from my blog.

George gets an idea. Maybe if Elroy saw the plans, he could fix the Sprockets! As he and Elroy scramble towards Waldo's car, Jane tells George that he doesn't have to prove anything. George says that he has to take a chance. "It's wrong to live in fear," he says. "If I don't understand technology... then why am I scared of it?" Off he and Elroy fly in the car, eventually arriving at the museum inside the Spacely Sprockets factory. They find the records, but the writing doesn't make any sense. According to George, the writing on them has always been jumbled because Grandpa Spacely was dyslexic. On the bright side, George does find a journal with the original sketch of a sprocket. It's also filled with writing that he can read - so it couldn't have been written by Grandpa Spacely. Very peculiar...

Then they run into Mr. and Mrs. Spacely. When George asks Mr. Spacely about the journal, Mr. Spacely admits that his grandfather was a fraud. He didn't invent anything, he just stole the idea from his lab assistant, paid her off, and told her to scram. That lady who was demanding money from him earlier? That's the lab assistant, and he's STILL writing her checks. Perhaps SHE can figure out what's wrong with the Sprockets. Little does George know that Bob Brain is watching them. "I should've put him on Prozac when I had the chance," he mutters. Uh oh...

Elroy creates gasoline, which should be enough to get the car to Jupiter. They blast off, but Bob Brain chases after them in a space Mercedes, firing guns. He demands that George pull over. "NO! I don't need your help anymore, Doc!" George snaps before slamming down on the accelerator. Bob Brain is still in hot pursuit. George finds a button on the dashboard that reads "FAST LANE" and presses it... which results in the rear seat of the car folding out into a bed. Then Elroy notices Judy's shoes. Remember, this car belongs to Waldo.

Before George can fume over his daughter getting it on with Waldo, he thinks of a way to get Bob Brain off his tail. He swerves into the Asteroid Beltway, and since he knows the road, he skillfully ducks in and out of the space gravel. Bob Brain, who doesn't know the road, is having more trouble. Eventually, he turns around. But he also takes a card out of the mechanical Rolodex in his chest... the one that has George's address. As Astro might say, "rhuh rhoh"...

A bunch of machines storm into the Jetsons' house and drag Jane, Judy, Astro, and Waldo away. Fortunately, they didn't get Rosey, but George and Elroy better find that lab assistant and fast. They make it to her house, which is described as a "70's Tract House". The lab assistant, Inga, is home, and she says she prefers to live as though it's still... well, our time because she doesn't want to become too reliant on technology like everyone else. She also tells them that it's impossible to live with sprockets, because they only work in a totally clean environment. If they get just one speck of dirt on them, they go haywire. This gives George an idea... if they get a LOT of dirt on the sprockets, it just might do some serious damage. If only they knew where "Pig-Pen" lived...

Back on Earth, all of the humans have been enslaved - except for Jane, Judy, Astro, and Waldo so that Bob Brain can use them as hostages when George shows up. In the meantime, Bob Brain declares himself "Supreme Emperor and Top-of-the-Line Model", that from now on machines will be known as "Mechanical Citizens", and that humans will be known as "Sons of Monkeys". Little does he know that George, Elroy, and Rosie are sneaking around trying to find the other Jetsons. They are briefly spotted by a British robot butler, but Rosie claims that she's just "escorting the prisoners", so he leaves them be. Once they snatch the keys to the other Jetsons' cell and free them. Now they just have to get out of there.

This doesn't have anything to do with what's going on in the script, but I didn't
want to go this long without another picture. So here's a drawing I did that displays
my feelings on how George treated Elroy and Astro in the episode "Elroy's Mob".

Problem is, Bob Brain spots them escaping on a surveillance monitor and sends security robots after them. The good guys manage to outsmart some jetpacks and soar down the corridors. After a few more encounters with machines, they make it to the generator room. Just as George is about to press the button he needs to, guess who shows up?

Ee-yup, Bob Brain, with a bunch of robot guards holding laser guns. He's all "I've got you now!" to which George says, "I don't think so. I figured out your weakness." Bob Brain insists that he doesn't have any weaknesses. He is perfect. But George says that there's one thing he doesn't have: LOVE. This is the Jetsons' cue to hug the robot guards. When Bob Brain refuses to give in to the Power of Love, George hits a big red lever marked "Air Purification System" and clicks it from "EXHAUST" to "REVERSE". The room starts rumbling. On the Earth's surface, the exhaust grates on all the platform bases begin sucking in dirt, twigs, pollen, grass, all the harmless debris of nature (hopefully not any animals). Dirt is blown out of the air vent right above Bob Brain. In fact, ALL the air vents in the building shoot out dirt. The furnaces make a grinding sound. The system is being clogged...

And then, KABOOOOOOOOOOOOM! All over the city, the roofs explode, and clouds of dirt rain down on the machines, killing them. The evil has been defeated. The humans cheer as the Jetsons step out the door of City Hall. Cogswell points out that they shouldn't have let a bunch of gizmos and doodads run their lives. Yeah, you really shouldn't have. I don't know what would've been worse, being enslaved by the machines or turning into the humans from WALL-E. Actually, maybe the first one. At least the humans from WALL-E had those flying chairs.

That night, the Jetsons relax around the fireplace. Jane declares that she never wants to see another machine again. George agrees... although they certainly need a new cleaning machine and dressing machine. The script ends with George reading Elroy a bedtime story...

...oh, wait! That's not the end after all! During the closing credits, they recreate the cartoon's title sequence. Not sure why they didn't do this at the beginning like the Flintstones movie did, although one possible reason might be to reveal that George now works at SPACELY-JETSON SPACE SPROCKETS (now dirt-resistant!), not Spacely's Sprockets - he's the chairman!

Honestly, this wasn't bad.

I'm not kidding. Everyone was in-character, there were some funny gags in there (I liked the Jetsons being all confused by the natural world), and while the "machine uprising" plotline is a bit out of place for a Jetsons movie, it does make for a nice cautionary tale about not being too reliant on technology - a lesson that we need nowadays more than ever. I think this would've made a decent movie... a decent ANIMATED movie, that is. I probably liked this script because I didn't have to stare at a bunch of actors dressed in George, Jane, Elroy etc. Halloween costumes facing off against dated-looking CGI robots (and just imagine what ASTRO would've looked like). Even if they had a great cast, it likely would've just been silly. Of course, there's no way they would've decided to make this animated - after all, they'd just had a theatrical animated Jetsons movie a few years ago and it was a box office bomb, and this was probably only greenlit to cash in on the success of the live action Flintstones. I don't know if a live action Jetsons movie would've been a bigger success. Probably would've depended on the release date it was given, what films it was up against, and how well it was promoted (all reasons that are, for some reason, alien to movie studios when a film flops at the box office).

Well, here's hoping the animated Jetsons movie in development will be good. Or at least better than Scoob!. At this point, maybe we should be hoping it actually gets released instead of being shelved as a tax-write off. It's Warner Bros., after all...