Dreamworks is looking to take us back to the land of living hats, Lidsville. The studio has announced that they are developing a new animated adaptation of the 1970s live action television series from producers Sid and Marty Kroft. The project is being headed up by Monsters Vs Aliens and Shrek 2 director Conrad Vernon who promised in a New York Times interview, “We’re going to try and keep a lot of characters from the original show even though we might play with the designs and with their backstories, so they fit into a full-length feature.”
The Krofts produced some of the weirdest children’s television programming in the history of the medium, and saying that Lidsville was perhaps the strangest show among their output is saying something. For the uninitiated, the show centered on the adventures of a pre-teen Mark, played by a post-Munsters Butch Patrick, who is accidentally transported to the titular world where hats are alive and live in fear of the evil wizard Horatio J HooDoo, Charles Nelson Reilly in green makeup. This only scratches the surface of the weirdness. For more on the show’s backstory check out it’s opening embedded below.
As a little kid growing up in the 70s, I was mesmerized by the absolute bizarreness of the show. It was later when I got to college and happened across a rerun of the show that I began to suspect that the Kroft’s quite possible had a supplier of something truly potent.
Vernon promises to try and keep that weird vibe going in this new version.
You really have to look at the source material and be true to it. There is something at the heart of every show they did that captured the audience back then, and that’s something you can’t lose.
I wish him the best of luck, considering that the last Sid and Marty Kroft big screen adaptation was the critical and box office dud Land Of The Lost.
