Fox Animated 'Flintstones' Spin-Off 'Bedrock' Will Star Elizabeth Banks
The world wants, no, demands more Flintstones content, and Elizabeth Banks is going to make it happen.
Banks will executive produce and star in Bedrock, an animated Flintstones spin-off series that follows an adult Pebbles Flintstone, voiced by Banks. The project was actually first announced back in 2019 and now it's ended up at Fox. This isn't Fox's first attempt to revive The Flintstones, either – they once ordered a Flintstones reboot from Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane, but ended up passing on the project in 2012.
Two years ago it was announced that Elizabeth Banks was working on a Flintstones spin-off called Bedrock for Warner Bros. TV. Now, that show has found a home at Fox, per THR. The animated series "will be set 20 years after the 1960s series and center on a grown-up Pebbles Flintstone (voiced by Banks)." Who is this series for, exactly? People who love to recognize things, I guess! So it goes. The series follows "20-something Pebbles as she begins her own career while her dad, Fred, nears retirement. With the Stone Age giving way to an enlightened new Bronze Age, the residents of Bedrock will find this evolution harder than a swing from Bamm-Bamm's club." Sure, great.
Banks and Max Handelman will executive produce via their Brownstone Productions, and Lindsay Kerns (Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous, DC Super Hero Girls) is writing the pilot script. "The Flintstones are the first family of primetime animation," said Peter Girardi, executive VP of alternative programming at Warner Bros. Animation. "Elizabeth and Lindsay have a brilliant take on these characters, and Fox and [Banks' company] Brownstone are the perfect partners to bring them back to primetime. This is going to rock (sorry)."
Fox Entertainment president Michael Thorn added: "Long before the Simpsons and Springfield, the Griffins and Quahog or even when the Belchers started serving burgers on Ocean Avenue, there were the Flintstones and Bedrock. Their imprint on the animation universe is undeniable and the idea of adapting it for today's audience is a challenge we here at Fox are very much looking forward to taking on with Warner Bros., Elizabeth and Lindsay. No pressure whatsoever, really."
The original Flintstones premiered in 1960 and ran for 6 seasons. It followed a prehistoric family and their many wacky adventures, most of which included talking dinosaurs that are used as household appliances. The series was hugely influential and eventually turned into a live-action movie in 1994. And even though pretty much everyone agreed that movie wasn't very good, it still received a sequel – The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas in 2000. No one liked that movie, either.
About a decade ago, Fox gave a straight-to-series order for an animated Flinstones reboot from Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane, but the network ultimately passed on the show after reading some of the scripts. Will Banks and company succeed where MacFarlane failed? I yabba-dabba-don't know.