Noël chez Bugs Bunny & Opération Bugs Bunny (found French live-action/animated Christmas TV special; 1997)

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Operation bugs bunny.jpg

Screencap of the title card.

Status: Lost

Opération Bugs Bunny was a Christmas TV special that was originally aired on French channel France 2, on December 24th, 1997. The special would have aired at 8:45 PM and would last for 1-hour 43 minutes. It was directed by Michel Hassan.[1]

Plot

Santa Claus is depressed and refuses to give away gifts as he usually does. Bugs Bunny is charged with finding him and cheering him up back into his job, including showing him some of his own old cartoons.

Cast

The late Michel Galabru plays Santa Claus.

Portuguese-Belgian singer Lio is credited as "Bugs Bunny's girlfriend", although it seems unlikely she is meant to portray Lola Bunny.

Other celebrities appear, such as Canadian stand-up comedian Gad Elmaleh and French singer/comedian Richard Gotainer.

Bugs Bunny himself has been described as being CGI-animated. It is possible this aesthetic choice - and the basic idea of the special itself - was influenced by the movie Space Jam that came out in France in 1997 (in which Bugs Bunny as a cartoon appears alongside live-action humans).

Gérard Surugue, who usually does the French dub of Bugs Bunny, reprises his audio role in this special.

Strangely, Dutch actress Tamar Baruch has also been credited as Bugs Bunny. It seems likely she was motion-capturing a CGI build of Bugs Bunny, in a way similar to what she did with Cléo from Cyber Flash, another 90s virtual CGI TV character.

Cléo on Cyber Flash, also performed by Tamar Baruch.

Availability

The special seems to have only aired once and there is no easily accessible footage to this day.

It seems some footage used to be on the video-sharing website wat.tv. However, wat.tv has been bought by TF1 and its videos are no longer available.

Only two screencaps from the TV special remain to this day, including the title screen and a screenshot of the special found on Michel Hassan's website.

Possibly related media

A kid show block on French channel Canal +, Ça Cartoon (which ran from 1986 to 2009), aired segments involving a CGI Bugs Bunny interacting with a live-action person as early as 1991. It resembles the lone screencap that is available. Both this and La planète de Donkey Kong/DKTV were produced by Medialab, which may also be behind the Opération Bugs Bunny special.

A similar Bugs Bunny on Ça Cartoon.

Gallery

A still photo, from Michel Hassan's website.

External Link

Reference