THUNDERCATS director chosen

By Matt Holmes / June 25, 2011

The attempt to bring the 80's back to the present day is set to continue as Warner Brothers have tapped up a director for their CG-animated big screen adaptation of Thundercats. His name is Jerry O'Flaherty, and you won't have seen any of his works before, but you might have played them. He is a video game veteran who worked as an art director on Gears of War, Unreal Tournament 3 and Command and Conqueror. O'Flaherty will now work alongside script writer Paul Socopy, whose screenplay convinced Warner Brothers to go ahead with the film this summer.

The origin story expands on the major heroes and villains from the animated series, with the plot focusing on Lion-O coming of age as the leader of the Thundercats. The property revolves around a group of humanoid cats who must flee the planet of Thundera, which is destroyed. Once crash-landing on another planet, Third Earth, they must thwart Mumm-Ra, an evil sorcerer bent on killing them off.

This to me sounds about as exciting as TMNT last year and I never did get round to seeing that. This project is clearly aimed for a different generation and I feel that despite the success of the 80s revival Transformers, they are going for a new and younger audience. Any Thundercats fans worried that a rookie helmer has got the job and that the script or the plan for the film wasn't strong enough to attract anyone else?