Edmund Earle A scene from a “Yogi Bear” parody created by the animator Edmund Earle.A video parody of “Yogi Bear” that’s much darker than your average episode of that vintage Hanna-Barbera cartoon – not to mention the coming Warner Brothers film adaptation – isn’t a viral marketing campaign gone awry. But the studio said on Monday that it wouldn’t try to take down the Web satire, either.
The video, which was posted Monday morning on YouTube, appears to be rendered in the same 3-D style as “Yogi Bear,” an animated feature starring Dan Aykroyd (as the voice of Yogi) and Justin Timberlake (as his sidekick, Boo Boo) that Warner Brothers will release on Friday. The key difference is that the parody, which takes its cues from the 2007 Western “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford,” ends with Boo Boo blasting Yogi with a rifle (the violence is implied but not depicted on screen) and turning him into a bearskin rug.
The painstaking accuracy of the satire – as well as closing credits that named the “Yogi Bear” director, Eric Brevig, and producers, Donald De Line and Karen Rosenfelt – had some viewers wondering if it was the handiwork of members of the “Yogi Bear” film team, perhaps trying to win over some grown-up moviegoers before its release, or possibly protesting the dumbed-down content of their own movie.
But as a graphic added to the video now states, the video is “an independently made parody by Edmund Earle with no association to Warner Brothers or the producers, directors and actors of the 2010 ‘Yogi Bear’ film.”
A spokeswoman for Warner Brothers said on Monday evening that the studio had been in contact with Mr. Earle, a 25-year-old animator and graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, who was willing to add the disclaimer to his work. The studio said the video was likely a protected work of parody and it would have required an excessive amount of legal work to have it pulled from YouTube, if that were even possible. Warner Brother said YouTube turned down a request to have viewers input their age before playing the video (to keep impressionable young viewers from seeing it) but that YouTube would monitor the situation.
Watch Edmund Earle’s “Yogi Bear” parody here: