Rankin/Bass Productions: Difference between revisions

Fixed Tolkien links in main text
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The general formula of these holiday specials was to take one or more classic holiday songs and to build a script (usually by staff writer Romeo Muller) around the music, featuring a celebrity narrator as an [[Ink Suit Actor]] in the story and interspersing it with original songs with music by Maury Laws and lyrics by co-producer Jules Bass. Very likely a majority of the characters will be voiced by [[Paul Frees (Creator)|Paul Frees]].
 
Rankin/Bass also produced non-holiday [[Animated Shows]]. Best known is probably ''[[ThundercatsThunderCats (1985 series)|ThundercatsThunderCats]]''; its other series included ''King Kong'', ''[[The Jackson 5ive]]'' and ''The Osmonds''. The popularity of ''Thundercats'' resulted in two follow-up series, ''[[Silverhawks]]'' and ''Tigersharks'' (the third appearing along with three other shows as ''[[The Comic Strip]]''.
 
Its most ambitious projects were animated adaptations of [[J. R. R. Tolkien|JRR Tolkien]]'s books, with ''[[The Hobbit (novel)|The Hobbit]]'' and ''[[The Lord of the Rings|The Return of the King]]''. (Not to be confused with [[Ralph Bakshi]]'s [[So Bad It's Good|ill-fated]] [[The Lord of the Rings (animation)|attempt]], which bridged the series.)
 
Along with ''[[The Last Unicorn (animation)|The Last Unicorn]]'' and ''[[The Flight of Dragons]]'', these films were the first major [[Animesque|U.S.-Japanese]] animation production crossovers. Many of the animators of ''The Hobbit'' went on to work for [[Studio Ghibli]].