Who owns the Fred Wolf Show?
 

Just curious, but who owns the distribution rights to Fred Wolf These days? it switches hands so often, not really sure who it is now.

I'm also assuming anyone who wants to release it also has to go through nick as well. which might be why we haven't seen it on pluto tv yet.

Cybercubed probably owns some stock in it.

How many times has it actually switched hands?

So far as I know, Lionsgate has always been the exclusive distributor of US-region DVDs and digital copies (YouTube, iTunes, AmazonPrime, VUDU/Fandango, etc), and they probably hold the rights to various other regions as well.

The original episodes are still the property of "Fred Wolf Films" (or whatever the company is called today).

I don't know if Viacom (or Mirage) ever received any royalties but I'm sure they at least have to credit the companies as the franchise IP holders so I'd expect at least some money changes hand, assuming it's not a legal necessity that is a hold-over from the Mirage/Fred Wolf agreement.

So, if anything where to happen with the FW show, one would have to contact someone at FWF, Lionsgate, and Nick. Say, hoping to get a sound track released.. or see if the show could be put on pluto tv...

I'm surprised by the lack of attention the 1987 show gets, I mean you'd think viacom would be interested in buying the rights to the cartoon that is the most popular incarnation of the franchise and that they currently make tons of money off of with merchandising. Maybe they don't see a lot of return of investment from streaming the show when compared to what it cost them but it'd still be a fraction of the price of all they make from it. Just being able to use those clips on their social media feeds should be make it worth it, which they avoid doing because they don't own the rights.

It's clear lions gate doesn't care about the show either, they never did much more than the half assed dvd releases from the 2000s and have only re-released those same releases over. No remaster, no better quality version, still the same bad quality 13 episodes per disc which lowered quality release. Look at all the releases transformers and even he-man has gotten over the years and the TMNT are just bigger franchises. It's a shame.

I agree, it doesn't make any sense that they wouldn't go after it and get everything whole sale. and what one would argue would be the biggest resellable part of the franchise.

In this particular case, I've been toying around with an idea for a few years now. To start A Kick starter to have Peter Reneday, Pat Fraley, Rob Paulsen, Barry Gorden and Jim Cummings all re record lines that they missed the first time, and have them in corporated back into the show.

For Peter, he'd need Donatello's Bad Time, and Mike Meets Bugman Again.
For Pat, Blast From the Past, CowaBunga ShreadHead, and Green With Jealousy.

For Barry, Ring of Fire. 20,000 Leaks Under the City, Leatherhead Terror of the Swamps, Four MuskerTurtles, and a few others.

For Rob, Turtle Terminator, a handful of other 1989s like Ninja Sword of Nowhere. all of the European Eps. all of 1996. Probably the most at 30 or so shows.

For Jim he missed one as Leatherhead in Night of the Rhouges, and he'd redub all of the ones james missed as shredder so they replacement was concurrent, maybe closer to 25 shows. 4 for 94-96. all 13 of 1993. and some from 1989.

I figure if all the participants where on board, and we got permission from lions gate and nick to go ahead with the experiment, we might be able to raise enough to make it work. especially with rewards being things like voice mails, or video messages or autographs.

I have in mind some people I'd bring aboard to help organize it, but this is something i've been thinking about for a while. with maybe a stretch goal being to dub turtles forever.

if we where successful in raising funds, it could prove to nick and lions gate that the interest is there.

But the first step is to figure out the proper parties to contact. the second step would be to see if everyone of the participants is on board. the third step would be to finalize a fund amount. but first the two hurdles before it needto be reached.

That's a neat project but it'll be very hard to ever get it made officially. It'd be easier to first get the exact amount of lines that they would need to dub, individually contact each VA with the amount of lines and how much they'd charge for that. Once you have a quote from all of them start a kickstarter campaign. Of course that means it'd be up to fans that would need to insert the audio files into the episodes and whatnot so it wouldn't be appealing but I see that as far more likely to happen than if trying to do it officially since it'd be so much work.

You can contact some members here for example the JL x TMNT fanproject game had 1987 April do some voice over to get more info on how they did it to get an idea.

but a few lines versus a whole shows worth of lines would vary the cost alot. and do you pay them per show, or per project? if anyone from nick 2012 is reading this and might be able to fill in details, most appreciated. it'd be a good place to get started.

We already know how many shows each of them would have to do. Barry, Peter, and Pat the least. Rob and Jim the most. and the latter two would probably be the higher cost being the more frequent current workers.

the project would obviously have a flexible schedule, if it ever got to goal reaching. so time wouldn't be an issue. it would be an 'as had' type.

Rob Paulsen missed two Season 3 episodes, 13 European Vacation episodes, and 8 Season 10 episodes.

So altogether he missed 26 episodes of the OT, that's basically a full season worth of episodes. There's no way Rob Paulsen is doing lines for 26 episodes on a fan budget. He gets paid millions to do a 26 episode season. (think of one full season of the 2012 show as Donatello)

Yeah, I love Rob but there's no way he pulls millions of dollars per season of a show.

yeah. I bet it's alot, but millions is more chris pratt type money. In my bet, it's probably more thousands. however, would it be say ten thousand a season, or a 1,000 per episode? How would one budget a fan project like this?

that's why I think that if we can find the right people to contact at nick and lion's gate that would give us their support, budget finding would be the next hurdle.

I meant a million per season. He's been in the VA industry since...the 80's, right? Obviously a long-term veteran like himself gets paid a lot more than newcomers to voice acting.

Seems like decades since this show has even aired in reruns in the U.S. That's crazy.

Is it common to air reruns of 25 years old cartoons?

I mean, it's definitely not UNcommon.

re-runs? we live in the digital age, people stream now only old people watch old regular tv anymore. I literally haven't done it in over 15 years. Even most grandparents and older generations stream now.

Even if the landscape of how we consume video had not changed no one would've watched reruns of the OT in 2020, it's not HD, not widescreen and looks old. When I was a kid in the 90s it was a chore to watch re-runs of anything from the 80s or older with a few exceptions of course. Even if it was only a few years away back then the cartoons and everything felt different. New generations want new stuff not reruns of the old stuff.

Let's face it: the 1987 series is trash now.

What I'm a little worried about is what happens to it after Fred Wolf, the guy himself, dies. I seriously doubt his estate cares about keeping the rights to those shows he made and might just sell them off to some holding company, like how Dreamworks bought one of those holding companies that just ate up the Filmation, WEP and Harvey Libraries. Whatever holding company ends up getting that show will likely "grow fat and juicy" to attract an actual production company to buy them out. Now what has me worried here is that I know there was some kind of loophole attached to the Masters of the Universe cartoons made by Filmation, which lead to Hasbro and Dreamworks having some weird independence in creating new iterations of the franchise.

I doubt such a loophole is attached to the Fred Wolf TMNT cartoon, considering character rights does not appear to have been a problem for either Nickelodeon or IDW. And while I would not get upset if such a loophole was found and it turned out that, let's say, Nickelodeon could not use the Technodrome or Dimension X again if WB or Disney got the rights to it, there might be other unforseen consequences.

And Viacom gets it... Ugh, we've already seen them be obnoxious in pretending they own the rights to it, I don't want to see what they would do if they actually did. In a weird way, I wish that the rights to the TMNT franchise itself and the rights to the Fred Wolf show will never ever be under the same umbrella.

As in the quality of the show itself is low or that it is poison to the future of the franchise? Because I can make a solid argument for both.

Let's face it: your opinion is trash now and forever.

Ouch! Why so salty, pal? I know a lot of you here love the old cartoon but there's no reason to take it so personal. When I say that show is trash now I mean it money wise. There are more people interested in products BASED on the show than the show itself. That show is not generating any money now and no company is interested in remastering it.
Maybe a sequel would push people to go back to it and make them want to rewatch it.

Because, I've tired of dumb **** like that.
Yes, it was product of its time.
No, it doesn't make it horrible.
Deal with it.

The show had very poor quality control and as a result there are very obvious animation errors along with several other types of errors, not to mention how writers seemed to operate in isolation and turn in first draft scripts. There are some things that can be chalked up to it being a "product of it's time", like the strict episodic format, but not every problem is one that had to exist simply because it was made in the late 80's and 90's. People knew how to remove an animation cel before putting in a new one in 1920, I seriously doubt it was a "lost art" by 1990.
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You can aim criticism about animation at basically any show from the 80s. Its still was more animated than many others and quality of animation rarely was outright dreadful.

As for the scripts - yeah, they ranged from dumb-fun to just dumb, but once again, on average they were still good for what show intended to be. And continuity was never top priority for the show.

Also, how do you measure quality of scripts intended for comedy action for kids? Its like looking for plotholes in something like Hot Shots.

I agree, sure it can be dated but I didn't really have much nostalgia of the 1987 show. I barely watched it as a kid since it never aired at times i could catch it so I really watched the 1987 for the first time as a teenager when the DVDs came out and it was solid enough, same thing I can't say for other 80s cartoons that bored me to tears. FWL is even younger than most of us and started watching the 1987 when 2k3 was already a thing I think and preferred the 1987 version.
It has a certain charm, now I don't think the 1987 is going to wow any kids today but I wouldn't say it's trash like say He-Man, transformers or other very popular 80s cartoons.

If I had a million dollars first thing I would do is purchase the rights for the show, remaster it, fix some of the voice/animation errors, and then put out HD blu-ray sets.

back on topic, I Was doing some research, and it seems fred wolf owns the logo to the old show. which might explain why no one else has re used it.

What if he owns the old show lock stock and barrel? We'd have to find some way to contact him first. Then maybe lions gate.

I did have the wonderfuly supportive bill wolf on my fb friends list, but sadly he passed away in the last year. he would have been the easiest contact to ask.

looking online, FWF doesn't have an online presence other than a old 90s' looking website.

The animation is often choppy, obvious errors crop up way too often and it even does really weird things I don't quite understand the motive of. In season 1 for example, there is a scene where all the turtles sit in the van which is later re-dubbed and recycled later on in the same season, both versions have the characters speak in the wrong voices by the way. How is this excusable?

And yes, technically something like Transformers has even worse quality control and He-Man is basically nothing but the same few bits of animation repeated every episode, the Fred Wolf show is technically better than those in terms of animation quality but that isn't really an excuse. Animation errors are animation errors, it doesn't when they were made or by who under whatever circumstances, errors are still errors and should be avoided.

As for the scripts, technically a comedy can get away with nonsense but needs to be a punchline attached to it or else it isn't a joke, which is necessary because otherwise you've just written a bad plot.

Interesting, that logo is so iconic. Nonetheless, I like that each incarnation of tmnt has had his own different logo through the years. I'm glad Neca and Super7 were able to use that classic logo.

Well, technically the Archie comic, the live-action movies and the old video games used it but it is true that it has not been reused since the show ended, even for merch using the Fred Wolf designs.

As for wheter or not Fred Wolf owns the show in it's entirety is hard to tell. If anyone has a DVD boxset, you could just look for the copyright symbol somewhere, that's a pretty good start.

I do have nostalgia for it, as I grew up on it alongside Disney Afternoon stuff (Duck Tales, Chip & Dale, e.t.c.).

However, I rewatched all 10 seasons 10 years ago and, for me, it was a pretty good show. Once again, it was good for what it supposed to be: comedy-action (commercial) for kids. Nothing else.

I agree, errors were pretty rampant through the show, but I don't consider them distracting enough, unless they are very very obvious, like ****ed up background in Mighty Bebop and Super Rocksteady, which also reuses the same animation twice in a span of a minute. Or lack of internals in a module in the Lord of the Flies.

As for the scrips, they were pretty OK for me. Not sure, what do you mean about lack of punchline.

I'm referring to comedies intentionally using contradictions and illogical writing for the purpose of making a joke. Take this scene from Emperor's New Groove:


We are shown that it is impossible for Yzma and Kronk to get ahead of Kuzco, so when Kuzco asks how they did it, they don't even know themselves. This is deliberately crafted to get a laugh out of the audience. While the movie would still have been a comedy and the jokes during the chase scene would still have worked if they didn't highlight the contradiction, it would not have been a joke if they didn't point it out, it would just have been a plothole and not funny.

In the first season of the Fred Wolf cartoon, Krang bitches to the Shredder about giving him a robotic body because he seemingly can't move much or operate machinery much without one. Yet the MOUSER episode shows that he was perfectly able to leave the Technodrome and is dexterous enough to untie knots, not to mention how the episode shows us that the Technodrome's factory can be reprogrammed to manufacture any machine, which opens up the question of why he even needed Shredder's assistance in the first place. This isn't brought up within the story in any way, either for comedic or serious purposes, it's just a contradiction that undermines the premise of the entire season.

Jokes can build on what would normally be bad writing or breaks in logic, but bad writing and breaks in logic alone does not make for a joke. There still needs to be a form of logic to the joke itself so that the audience can follow along and laugh with the show, if it doesn't have that why would we laugh or even understand that it was meant to be a joke in the first place? Just because the show qualifies as a comedy, that doesn't mean everything in it is intended to be a joke, and even if it is then the joke isn't automatically funny just because it was meant to be. The running gag about the Turtles having weird pizza toppings is clearly meant to be a joke, but I don't find it funny just because it was meant to be.

You're not completely wrong here, but being able to untie knots and move around on a few wheels is on a whole another level of effort as compared to building an android body and operating machinery.

I mean, the show is not super complex or anything, but I feel like these criticisms are far too nitpicky. The average viewer will probably criticise the animation and dated humour which I think is fair, but these contradictions aren't really contradictions in the first place, atleast not in any significant way that makes the show unwatchable or completely nonsensical.

FW TMNT and ENG work in different genres - ENG meant to be straight up comedy-musical movie, whereas TMNT were meant to be much simpler TV series with some action elements. Thus writers goal were quite different from each other, thus this comparison is off the mark and invalid.

I am not really what it had to do with punchlines, because, it is complaint about continuity more like. And continuity was never top priority for FW show. It barely existed and there is a bunch of contradictions, thanks to different writers doing their own thing, while ignoring each other works.

Once again FW TMNT wasn't meant to be big on a continuity.

You have different sense of humor. Its OK.
I do like those jokes, so?
Different strokes for different folks and all that.

No, it's a basic example of how a contradiction can be used for a joke. It applies to anything that intends to be a comedy, be it a movie or a TV show. If there isn't an actual joke attached to the contradiction, it's just a contradiction.

You pointed out that trying to judge the quality of the scripts of TMNT is like pointing out plotholes in Hot Shots. This is an example how you can judge the quality of a comedy.

If you want another example, when there is an animation error in the Fred Wolf show, that's clearly just an error because it doesn't tie into any joke. This scene from Spaceballs where Dark Helmet accidentally kills a cameraman is clearly still a joke because... Well, they didn't just happen to get a shot of the secondary camera team, it plays into the scene:


You can't just deflect criticisms about errors because the show is a comedy, nor can you claim it doesn't need to construct a joke properly because it isn't entirely a comedy. You need to argue that the jokes aren't just errors or argue why they aren't errors in the first place.

The scene I am talking about shows us that Krang has left the Technodrome, entered a street level building and presumably left it before it collapsed a few minutes later. How do you think he did that? Either he operated a vehicle that brought him to the surface or he climbed there under his own power. And as I already mentioned, the Technodrome is capable of constructing robots as long it is provided a blue print, so why does he need someone else's hands if we know he's strong enough to push a button?

This isn't a nitpick because the premise of the season is that Krang is helpless without a body but Shredder is reluctant to help him out, and the scene in particular is important because it moves the plot along. It is a serious issue because the show broke the premise of the plot to further the plot.

Continuity is important on some level if you want to tell a coherent story. You might be able to argue that it is not important between episodes (I'll get back to that) but within the same episode? No, maybe as a joke but not otherwise. The example with the MOUSER episode has a scene where Krang complains about not having a body and how he can't do anything without one, again, the same episode where he can somehow leave and return to the Technodrome unnoticed. It's not like how one episode depicted Krang's species as disembodied brain creatures and then dozens of episodes later they were giant lizards, the same exact episode is inconsistent about what he is and isn't able to without a body.

As for continuity between episodes, there must be some level where you actually care, right? "The Principal and the Pauper" is one of the most hated episodes of the Simpsons, precisely because it breaks continuity with previous episodes and despite the Simpsons generally disregarding continuity anyway. The premise of Principal Skinner as a character is that he was raised by a verbally abusive mother and sergeant in Vietnam, which is why he behaves the way he does. According to "The Principal and the Pauper" that backstory was a lie, which didn't make sense to anyone.

So if the Fred Wolf show retconned Splinter's backstory to make him Yoshi's pet rat instead of Yoshi himself, would you be OK with that? I doubt it.

And I'm not really going to go into why a joke can be poorly constructed here, the post might get too long.

As I said before, I don't think that FW TMNT is a perfect show. When it comes to comedy, most of the time its jokes work for me, but there are times, when they are too dumb or just "what?".

I think, and maybe I am mistaking about it, you are a bit too obsessed with an idea, that everything about FW TMNT is bad. Which is not the case.

Yes, that's a plothole or at least not explained story element.
But I don't it hurts series a lot for reasons stated below.

Not really.
FW TMNT is choke full of "negative" continuity, where a lot of things contradict each other even in the span of the same season, not to mention the whole series. Two Atlantis? Splinter being leader of the Foot Clan, despite being mere pupil and kicked out even before he could reach any notable position (talking about Splinter being a human or a rat)? Characters who appear out of nowhere and act like they were always there?

I mean, arguing that FW TMNT has any solid continuity is a strange and macabre waste of time. Even worse arguing that people should be up in arms about it. As a kid I saw all this story issues and I didn't care since I watched show for something different: good jokes and fun interactions between characters.

My position regarding this show hasn't changed - its continuity is barely existing, its choke full of holes and contradictions and I like it that way, since I like it for something different.

If you want to complain about series with continuity issues, you can look at 2k3 series, which didn't had guts to stuck with Utrom Shredder and felt necessity to "redeem" itself and introduce Demon and Human Shredders, cheapening Ch'rell in the process.
This is where it matters.
In FW this stuff does not.

I think the most simple and sensible explanation is that a Foot Soldier carried him there and back. I dont think that breaks the plot in any significant way.

The Technodrome also just can't create a machine on its own, the mousers could only be mass produced because there was a prior physical model that Baxter created first that we even see being replicated. For the android body on the other hand, there was only a drawing on paper.

Well, no everything about the show is bad but the problem is that it quite often fails do basic fundamentals rights.


Yes, that's a plothole or at least not explained story element.
But I don't it hurts series a lot for reasons stated below.

I'm sorry but this really just comes across like "because they didn't care, we shouldn't either and therefore it's not a problem". It is a problem because even if the show was episodic, there is still some things that carry over from previous episodes and some semblance of a storyline.

And even if we say continuity between episodes don't matter, when it's argued that Krang should be allowed to do things he explicitly says he can't do in the same episode, that is the same as arguing that a 20 minute episode can have a serious internal contradiction and be perfectly fine.

And I ask you again, is there really nothing that this show could have done to break your immersion? Let's be even more explicit here, if the show had totally just retconned Splinter's season 1 backstory and replaced it with the Mirage backstory, would you not have called BS? If the show suddenly decided Bebop and Rocksteady were aliens rather than Mutants, what would your reaction have been like? What if April's occupation randomly changed from being a reporter to a computer programmer and it was treated like she had never been a reporter, would that seem right to you? I know none of that actually happened but you make it seem as if the show could go to any extreme break in continuity and you'd be fine with it. So if any of that happened would you be fine with it? And if not, what is the most extreme change you could have accepted?

Programming a robot to carry him around still means he had enough agency to operate machinery to some extent. It's arguably even worse because then he could just order the robot to build the body for him, which still means he has no use for Shredder.

And the idea that the factory can only create robots if it first scans a pre-existing prototype is really weird. It would imply the machine is able to build all the parts from scratch and assemble them automatically, but can't do so unless someone else did it first. Factories in real life don't really have that limitation, why would a fictional factory using advanced alien tech have it? If Krang had the blueprints to build his robotic body and Technodrome had or could construct the parts needed, then the factory should suffice.

But its literally what it is: they didn't care to establish show with a solid continuity and basically treated each episode as a standalone ground for various jokes and gags. Why we should, suddenly, seek any system or logic in it?

Yeah, some things had carried from one episode to another, but it was an anomaly in such show.

I am not really sure what kind of immersion do you mean in this case?

I am immersed myself into jokes and gags, while watching it, not some serious continuity and character explorations. I never took this show superseriously.
This is why I don't like Red Sky seasons, because, in my eyes, they have betrayed purpose of the show. As for, the rest of it - I treat everything that happens in the show as part of a gag / comedy, so I take as seriously as continuity in say Naked Gun movies.

What you basically arguing is that people should treat this show, like a serious story, when it was never meant to be it.

The 1987 show shows more care about continuity than the average 80s or even 90s show. It never gets too bad IMO. The biggest outliers being the ones already in this thread but you find worse examples in other shows. When I watched the cartoon basically for the first time in the 00s i was surprised by how much continuity carried over. Many 90s cartoons wish they had gotten that much care.

Even as a kid i was always obsessed with continuity and all the stuff that was ignored or contradicted so It's something i always look out for.

Can't say I was obsessed with continuity, partially, because, our TV had a habit of showing episodes in random order and partially, because, I often forgot to watch another episode of whatever TV series I was interested at the time.