Cartoon adds three new series
By Allison Romano -- Broadcasting & Cable, 2/21/2003 3:00:00 AM EST
Cartoon Network is readying three new animated series for 2003 as it steps up original-series development to help lure more viewers.
Like the fickle teens that view MTV: Music Television, kids and tweens crave fresh programming. Cartoon executive vice president and general manager Jim Samples said his channel simply hasn't had enough.
"Two new shows per year just isn't enough," he said. "Kids have a voracious appetite for new shows."
To correct its slide and fuel development, Cartoon is leaning both on its in-house production lab, Cartoon Network Studios, as well as corporate cousin Warner Bros. Animation.
Two of the new series for 2003 -- Duck Dodgers, where Daffy and friends play futuristic characters, and Teen Titans, a batch of teen superheroes guarding a West Coast city -- come from Warner Bros.
The third, Low Brow -- a show that borrows from Japanese and American animation styles about a giant robot and the people out to control it -- comes from Cartoon Network Studios.
Cartoon is creating a new strand of animated Star Wars shorts, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, which will begin airing later this year.
Cartoon is teaming up with Star Wars creator George Lucas' film company to create about 20 of the three-minute shorts.
They'll tell the story of the Clone Wars that occurs where Star Wars: Episode II -- Attack of the Clones leaves off.
The project is led by Genndy Tartakovsky, who created Cartoon's popular Samurai Jack and Dexter's Laboratory series.
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