Chuck Jones Gremlins 2 Intro Sketches

initial sketches planning out the Looney Tunes intro

Introduction

Director Joe Dante – a lifelong Looney Tunes fan – added the Bugs Bunny/Daffy Duck cartoon at the start of Gremlins 2 to set a wilder, more anarchic tone for the sequel. Given free rein by Warner Bros. to make the film his way, Dante commissioned Chuck Jones to create a custom Looney Tunes opener. According to Dante, he specifically wanted this unique opening “to set the anarchic tone” for everything that follows. The irreverent gag with Bugs and Daffy tells the audience that this movie will play by cartoon rules – a “live-action cartoon” full of Looney Tunes-style mayhem.

Chuck Jones Comes out of Retirement

Dante’s love for Warner Bros.’ slapstick cartoons ran deep, and he couldn’t resist sneaking them into his work. He even gave animator Chuck Jones a live-action cameo in the first Gremlins as a patron in the bar scene. For the sequel, Dante went further by integrating an actual new Looney Tunes short into the film’s start and finish. This cartoon helped establish the movie’s “anything can happen” spirit right from the beginning. As Dante later noted in the DVD commentary, the opening was meant to set a deliberately zany tone in contrast to the relatively straightforward original film.

Warner Bros. was initially nervous about some of Dante’s more out-there ideas – including moments where the film breaks the fourth wall – but the animated opening ultimately charmed them. Dante once recalled, “Nobody had come up with an idea of how to make another Gremlins... so out of desperation they came back to me and said, ‘If you’ll give us this picture by this date, we’ll let you do whatever you want.’” With complete creative control, Dante filled Gremlins 2 with tributes to classic cartoons. The Bugs and Daffy intro was a clear signal of the playful, self-referential tone to come. Dante even jokes in the commentary that Gremlins 2 is “one of the most unnecessary sequels ever produced,” so why not start by literally throwing out the rulebook in true Looney Tunes fashion?

Joe Dante’s enthusiasm proved contagious. He convinced the legendary Chuck Jones – the animator behind so many iconic Bugs and Daffy shorts – to come out of retirement for the project. Though mostly inactive by 1990, Jones agreed to animate new material for Gremlins 2, creating a historic collaboration that reunited him with the characters he helped define decades earlier. The film even acknowledges his contribution with a final gag: after Daffy’s last scene during the credits, the Warner Bros. shield falls and reveals the text “Title Animation Written & Directed by Chuck Jones,” smacking Daffy flat in the process.

Jones also wrote additional material that ultimately didn’t make the theatrical cut. The original intro was longer and featured a gag in which they proposes absurd alternative movie titles like Gremlin Stew and Super-Daffy Meets Gremlins Part 6. Bugs calmly vetoes each attempt until Daffy storms off and the proper title is revealed. This fully animated version survives as a deleted scene on DVD and Blu-ray.

The reason for its removal? According to Dante, early test audiences were confused by the prolonged cartoon and thought they had walked into the wrong movie. Warner Bros. worried it might disorient viewers expecting a live-action film, so Dante trimmed the intro to the shorter version where Daffy simply interrupts the logo. Despite the cut, Jones’s full version remains a treasure for fans who appreciate the old-school dynamic. Dante admitted that the longer version was hilarious but had to go because the movie was already running long and pacing was key.

Initial Sketches

These early Chuck Jones sketches reveal just how meticulously crafted the Gremlins 2 Looney Tunes intro was from its earliest stages. Long before a single frame was animated, Jones had already laid out the timing, expressions, and visual gags with remarkable precision. As the side-by-side comparisons show, these concept drawings closely mirror the final animated sequence—down to the poses, comedic beats, and framing—demonstrating the clarity of his vision and the discipline of his process.

What makes these sketches especially remarkable is how little changed between planning and execution. The consistency suggests that Jones not only had complete creative control over the sequence but also that his instinct for timing and character dynamics remained razor-sharp, even decades after his golden age at Warner Bros.

Apart from the actual production cels used in the finished film, these sketches stand as some of the most tangible artifacts of Chuck Jones’s direct involvement in Gremlins 2. They offer a rare behind-the-scenes glimpse at the artistry that brought Bugs and Daffy back to the screen in such a bold and memorable way—underscoring just how important Jones's contribution was to setting the anarchic tone of the movie.