One of my earliest attempts to create a weekly post in the pre Reviewing Network days was Dream Cast, a post in which I discuss casting for upcoming movies and TV shows announced so I figured after several years without doing one, let’s bring it back as a weekly post so, welcome to Dream Cast.
For this first episode, let’s tackle a recently announced project over at ABC, a live-action TV series version of the Hanna Barbera animated series, The Jetsons:
The new version, being produced by Robert Zemeckis, will be written by Gary Janetti, who has background in both multi-camera and animated comedy series, having worked on NBC’s Will & Grace and Fox’s Family Guy. Warner Bros. TV, whose sibling Warner Bros. Animation absorbed Hanna-Barbera two decades ago, is the studio.
About a year ago, the company Arconic actually put out a commercial where they redid the Jetsons intro in live-action form with the help of director Justin Lin and I gotta say, this was probably where the inspiration for this came from:
Plus ABC seems like the most logical place to do a live-action version of the series because ABC has been on a roll with family comedies for the past decade with the successes of The Middle, Modern Family, The Goldbergs, Fresh Off The Boat, Black-ish, & Speechless just to name a few so it makes sense that ABC would be the perfect home for this.
So, the question now becomes, should ABC have enough there to greenlit the series, who should play the respective characters?
This was actually one of the first Dream Cast posts I did ten years ago when I was writing on Spill.com so obviously, my casting choices would change considerably with time so here are some of the casting choices I would make if I was given the choice to cast the live-action Jetsons series:
George Jetson – Zachary Levi
This choice came down to watching that Arconic commercial I talked about earlier and really, Levi seems like a perfect choice for George, you dye his hair red, he does look very much like George Jetson and he has a lot of those characteristics of George that we saw in both Chuck and in Tangled, seems very much like perfect casting here.
Jane Jetson – Isla Fisher
She was somebody who I had originally casted in the early post I did and I still think she can still play that role today, she has enough energy and personality to her where she could easily fit in the role of Jane and make it work.
Elroy Jetson – Jackson Robert Scott
Now, more than likely, the kids of the Jetson family will more than likely be played by newcomers who will eventually become stars of their own but for the sake of this post, I would cast Jackson Robert Scott, soon to be seen in It, in the role of Elroy seeing as how he looks like the character and seems the closest to play that role to me.
Judy Jetson – Madison Iseman
Having already been seen in Modern Family and The Real O’Neals in bit parts, she’s already made her presence known in ABC comedies so the network could look at her to potentially move up to a bigger role in a comedy series. More than likely, it’ll depend on how she does in her upcoming role in Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle, where she plays the pretty high school girl who eventually becomes the Jack Black character when the characters get transported into the video game. We’ll see how things turn out but she’s definitely somebody that ABC probably has their number on.
Rosie The Robot – Kristin Chenoweth
Seeing as how this will more than likely be a CG effect, you want to get a voice for Rosie The Robot that fits in the spirit of what Jean Vanderpyl and Tress MacNeille bring, if there’s anybody than come close to the original voice of Rosie, Kristin Chenoweth’s pretty close to capturing the voice of Rosie if they want to bring in a bigger name to the character.
Astro – Frank Welker
This is a character you really don’t need to have a big named actor as the voice so I say stick to getting Frank Welker, who recently played Astro in the Jetsons WWE movie, to reprise the role.
Mr. Spacely – Peter Dinkage OR Danny DeVito
When I did the original post, I had Danny DeVito as a lock for Mr. Spacely and while I do think he could still do it, might be a little hard to do since he’s doing It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia. Although considering that both Kaitlin Olson and Glenn Howerton are doing shows at Fox and NBC in-between seasons, I don’t see why DeVito couldn’t take the role of Mr. Spacely.
With that said, I’ll throw Peter Dinklage’s name into the mix, I think he could play a really good Mr. Spacely and with Game Of Thrones heading into its’ final season, Dinklage’s schedule is about to be wide open pretty soon.
Those are my overall choice for who I would cast in a live-action Jetsons TV series.
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