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‘Hey Arnold’ TV Movie Coming Soon! Nickelodeon Plans To Revive Even More Classic Shows Too

By Janice Malcolm
Published on: 06:45 PST, Nov 23, 2015

Nickelodeon has been taking many steps to appeal to the nostalgia of its 90’s viewers and has been bringing back all time classic favorites during its “The Splat block” on TeenNick time slot and now aims to go a step further. Mr. Football head himself will be taking another step into the spotlight as a Hey Arnold! TV movie!

Nickelodeon was a staple for many millennials growing up on their line of animated shows, and the Viacom-owned station is attempting to use its past to build an even brighter future. The company has maintained that it is not their aim to target its older audience so much as to bring old and new together. Children who grew up on these 90s cartoons are grown and have children of their own now, and Nickelodeon wants to bring everyone together for family viewings. Russell Hicks, the president of content development and production at Nickelodeon, reportedly advised that even though they have “a robust pipeline of new fresh product,” exploring older series has its bonuses.

“Kids who grew up on these characters are now of the age that they are having kids and families themselves. Our library has come to fruition and it’s time for it to start coming back to life.”

Hey Arnold! ran from 1996 through to 2004 with a big screen movie adaptation in 2002 that did not do so well. The movie veered drastically from the original shows storylines and underperformed at the box office. However, this revival will actually stick to the plot and even wrapping up some loose ends for the football headed star. The fourth grader with the oblong-shaped head lived in a boardinghouse with his grandparents. The mystery of what exactly happened to Arnold’s parents is one of the unanswered plot lines that will reportedly be wrapped up in the upcoming movie. Thus far, the network has not given a release date for the production or even given fans a projection date for when the movie will be completed.

The network’s new senior vice president of content development, Chris Vivaldi, was the co-creator of the classic Nickelodeon series The Adventures of Pete & Pete. On top of building up current key content like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Dora the Explorer, and SpongeBob SquarePants, the vice president is also digging into the network’s vast library of old original series to create new shows. E! News wrote that this revival of old shows is becoming the new norm, and that means we could see other classics like The Wild Thornberrys and Ren and Stimpy potentially receive new life as well. However, the network has declined to discuss any other projects that may be in the works.

Executives have said though that they were not scaling back on new projects during their attempt to reboot the network’s classics. In fact, executives told Variety that Nickelodeon has in production over 13 new animated projects and 40 other things in development as well.

When relaying details regarding how exactly the new movie idea for Hey Arnold! and other classics came about, the executives mentioned that the active chatter on social media about Nick’s old shows inspired revisiting their library of content. There was also a bit of luck involved too, as the creator of Hey Arnold!, Craig Bartlett, happened to be pitching a different idea to Nickelodeon executives and began mentioning how fans kept the old series alive through fan fiction, fan art, and YouTube videos, and even now continued to get continuous mentions in online forums.

The new Hey Arnold! movie will see Bartlett returning as writer and executive producer. Nickelodeon is also said to be reaching out to other creators of those old classics in an effort to work with them about channeling their programs for a whole new generation of audiences.

[Image via livejournal.com]

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