Genndy Tartakovsky Reveals That He Once Pitched A Marvel Show

In the world of modern adult animation, one of the names you hear the most is Genndy Tartakovsky. While initially starting out making cartoons for younger audiences, such as Dexter’s Laboratory on Cartoon Network, he began to explore more mature forms of storytelling with later series, such as Samurai Jack and Sym-Bionic Titan, until eventually doing more exclusively adult-oriented work, such as Primal and Unicorn: Warriors Eternal.

But one other series the director is known for is the Star Wars: Clone Wars animated mini series, which ran on Cartoon Network from 2003 – 2005. It was the first piece of animated media to show that era of the franchise before its successor series in 2008. This was all before Star Wars was acquired by Disney, of course.



However, he revealed that he pitched another animated series to another company, one that would also eventually fall under the Disney umbrella.

In an interview with Collider, Tartakovsky said that he had pitched a Marvel series to Kevin Feige around the time of the first Robert Downy Jr. Iron Man movie. He stated:

“At the time, I had my own studio, and we were floundering. It was around 2008 and 2009, and couldn’t get any work. It was the recession. I went into Marvel to pitch them an animated superhero series, like, ‘I can take your characters and do what I did with Clone Wars .’ So I met with Kevin Feige , and we started talking, and he goes, ‘You know, Jon Favreau is a big fan of yours. Do you mind if he calls you?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, of course.’“

“And so then Jon actually called, and the animated superhero thing they weren’t really interested in. So, Jon calls and we met for lunch, and he talked about how he really liked Samurai Jack and the way I do stuff. He actually told me that in Iron Man 1 , he would look at the way I structured an action sequence, and he would kind of try to follow it , which was super, super nice. So, he asked if I could help him with the big action ending on Iron Man 2 , and I said, ‘Yeah, of course.’ I just kind of got in there and just did what I did, and it was super interesting.“

While it is a shame we never got to see the Marvel project, Marvel was busy trying to start the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Committing to such a project would have taken resources away from their other projects. Marvel did, however, release a handful of direct-to-video animated movies, the most recent one at the time being The Invisible Iron Man from 2007.

We don’t know what hero or heroes Tartakovsky would have used for his project, but it is still cool that he not only influenced the first Iron Man but had direct involvement with Iron Man 2.

Hopefully, someday, we may get to see Tartakovsky cross paths with Disney properties again. Perhaps a Planet of the Apes animated series? Who knows?

What do you think? Would Tartakovsky have made an awesome Marvel animated series? Or is it best that he went on to work on other projects? Let us know your thoughts. 

Source: Collider