After more than three decades at Disney, the rights to Roger Rabbit and all associated characters have officially returned to original creator. Gary K. Wolf.
“I now have back the rights to all my characters, all my books. I can, basically, do my own Roger Rabbit projects,” Wolf confirmed during an interview with ImNotBadTV.
Wolf now has full creative control over Roger, Jessica and all other characters from his 1981 novel, Who Censored Roger Rabbit?, and its 1988 film adaptation, Robert Zemeckis' beloved live-action/animated hybrid, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
“Any sequels that we do have to at least match the quality of the original [1988] movie,” he added. “In production value, in tone, in script content, in empathy, in character development. It has to be as good, or better than, what we did before. That’s what the fans want, and I have promised the fans that’s what I’m going to give them.”
While a direct sequel to Who Framed might be a long shot (though a re-adaptation of the book is on the table), Wolf reveals that he is already working on a live-action movie focusing on Roger's notoriously seductive wife, Jessica Rabbit.
“The one that is most prominent … is a live-action Jessica Rabbit movie based on the book Jessica Rabbit: XERIOUS Business,” Wolf said. “That was the first project that we took a look at and the first we started developing. It’s probably the one that’s furthest along right now.”
Jessica Rabbit is not bad - she's just drawn that way - but Zemeckis has previously revealed that the 'Toon femme fatale's curves might be a little too dangerous for Disney.
If you've never seen 1988's classic live-action/animation hybrid, you might be surprised (or even shocked) by how much risqué content was allowed to be featured in a PG-rated movie. There's kidnapping, voyeurism, drug use, a truly terrifying villain (Christopher Lloyd's Judge Doom), and the rather horrific murder of a cute cartoon shoe that traumatized an entire generation of kids.
Even so, Zemeckis feels Jessica (voiced by Kathleen Turner) is the main reason we never saw a sequel under the Disney banner. While being interviewed for the Happy Sad Confused Podcast last year, the filmmaker was asked about a potential Who Framed Roger Rabbit follow-up.
"There's a good script [for a sequel] at Disney, but here's the thing: The current Disney would never make Roger Rabbit today. They can't make a movie with Jessica in it."
Zemeckis added that the script in question, which was penned by original Roger Rabbit writers Peter S. Seamen and Jeffrey Price, simply "isn't ever going see the light of day, as good as it is. I mean, look what they did to Jessica at the theme park. They trussed her up in a trench coat, you know."
Zemeckis went on to explain how he was able to get the first movie greenlit in the first place.
"We were able to make it right at the time when Disney was ready to rebuild itself," he said. "We were there when that new regime came in, and they were full of energy, and they wanted to do it. I kept saying, and I sincerely say this, I do believe this, 'I'm making Roger Rabbit the way I believe Walt Disney would have made it.' The reason I say that is because Walt Disney never made any of his movies for children. He always made them for adults. And that's what I decided to do with Roger Rabbit."
"Down-on-his-luck private eye Eddie Valiant (Bob Hoskins) gets hired by cartoon producer R.K. Maroon (Alan Tilvern) to investigate an adultery scandal involving Jessica Rabbit (Kathleen Turner), the sultry wife of Maroon's biggest star, Roger Rabbit (Charles Fleischer). But when Marvin Acme (Stubby Kaye), Jessica's alleged paramour and the owner of Toontown, is found murdered, the villainous Judge Doom (Christopher Lloyd) vows to catch and destroy Roger."