Dave Filoni’s Clone Wars may be considered canon for the Disney era of Star Wars, but even before Revenge of the Sith, fans had Genndy Tartakovsky’s Clone Wars which introduced a lot of great action sequences and what some consider the best version of General Grievous.
As it turns out, Tartakovsky had the same idea for Marvel Studios. Talking to Collider, Tartakovsky talked about how he approached Marvel for an animated series featuring their characters. Tartakovsky explained:
“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 [ Star Wars ] 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.’”
Ultimately, Marvel wasn’t really interested in a show with Tartakovsky, but they managed to connect him to Jon Favreau who asked him to work on the final action scene of Iron Man 2. Tartakovsky continues:
“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.”
Ever since Iron Man 2, Tartakovsky hasn’t been able to work on anything Marvel or Star Wars, but he did get success when he launched the Hotel Transylvania franchise with Adam Sandler. For the more adult-oriented work, he does have the Primal animated series as well as a series called Unicorn: Warriors Eternal.
Maybe Marvel would be open to having him do something for an anthology series someday, but for now, it looks like their main focus is on X-Men ’97 and What If…?. Who’s to say Tartakovsky can’t come in and do an experimental short in 2D animation?
