Don't worry: Nickelodeon will take good care of your beloved TV memories
Treasured pieces of Nickelodeon's past will be a big part of its future.
On Tuesday, the network announced a pair of callbacks to the '90s heyday of modern, kid-friendly programming, revealing that it has plans for a movie adaptation of Legends of the Hidden Temple and the official greenlight for a two-part Hey Arnold! TV movie.
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The latter has been in development since late last year, when Nickelodeon began making plans for the 25th anniversary of Nicktoons, coming in 2016.
Chris Viscardi was the man put in charge of that initiative. Officially, he's the senior vice president of content development for Nickelodeon Franchise Properties. Unofficially, he's the man who holds your precious memories in his hands.
The good thing? They're his memories, too.
Viscardi is the co-creator of the The Adventures of Pete and Pete, the Nick classic about two brothers that ran for three seasons in the mid-'90s. Prior to that, he was on the staffs of Doug and Ren and Stimpy.
It's a time he remembers fondly. It's clear that he understands what made each show so special to viewers at the time -- and how that inaugural Nicktoon class defined the Nickelodeon spirit.
"They weren't just about making kids laugh. They were about connecting with them as real kids who have real issues," he told Mashable shortly after news of Arnold's resurrection was announced.
"Everything wasn't always tied up with a nice bow, like they are on certain other networks and their shows. There was just something ragged and beautiful and poetic about the best of those Nickelodeon shows."
Especially Hey Arnold.
In fact, it was Viscardi's love for Arnold -- and football head-shaped Arnold himself -- that immediately drew his attention when he began examining the network's library of properties.
"It was a really sweet, lovely, funny show -- all those qualities were extraordinarily appealing when the series first aired, and those qualities we know will translate now," he says. "And deeper into that, Arnold is a great, relatable, somewhat kind of underdog kid.
"He's surrounded by this wonderful eccentric, oddball collection of friends, and even though his family life is completely unique -- with his parents not around, and living in the boarding house with his grandparents and all the [tenants] -- there was something really relatable about him."
Hey Arnold creator Craig Bartlett will oversee the upcoming two-part film, set to debut in 2017. His involvement, says Viscardi, was key to making the project happen at all.
Bartlett came to the network with a vision for the story he wanted to tell -- a "really clear and concise and beautiful continuation of the series," Viscardi says.
The movie, per a logline, will also resolve some unanswered questions and plots from the series, including some answers about the whereabouts of Arnold's missing parents.
In the movie, too, Arnold will only be "a few days older" than when viewers last saw him -- thus, living in the same world, with the same friends. Meaning, yes, there will be no cell phones. ("Unless Craig Bartlett wants to see that, we will not be seeing that," Viscardi says.)
Arnold's timelessness makes it ripe for a revival. "The world we live in now is very different from the one that was, back in the day, but the need and the desire for a close knit family life and the connection with friends and the universal struggles that kids go through -- they remain today just like they did back then," Viscardi says.
And attracting today's kids is certainly still Nickelodeon's primary goal. More than anything, the network hopes that these revived shows will be watched and enjoyed by the audience they serve every day -- not just nostalgic Millennials.
That's part of the reason Arnold is coming back for a movie rather than a full series. With 13 original shows in production and about to hit the air -- and another 50 original animated series in development -- the network's plate is already full of original shows it remains committed to.
"We know that these library properties are valuable and cherished and we're interested in exploring them," says Viscardi. "But we're just interested in exploring them as specials right now, because we have so much original content that we're really proud of."
Even series without full reboots or TV movie adaptations will get honored this year when different animators craft original Vines and shorts inspired by the shows.
As for a Pete and Pete revival? Viscardi admits that live action reboots are "trickier" -- but says "there have been some conversations" about properties like Pete. The network's focus, however, remains on the animated favorites who are celebrating a milestone this year -- like Rugrats and Ren & Stimpy. (Sorry, Doug -- you belong to Disney these days.)
"Like I said, my long history with the network makes me take the rebooting of some of these old series very seriously," Viscardi says. "And we handle it with a lot of [care], because they mean a lot to us."
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Sandra Gonzalez was a Senior Television Reporter at Mashable. A Texas native, she spent almost four years in New York City before leaving the land of superstorms for Los Angeles, where she was introduced to these terrifying things called "rolling earthquakes."Previously, she was with Entertainment Weekly, where she wrote about every show that could fit into her perfectly crafted TV schedule and anything ever touched by Shonda Rhimes.You can reach her at [email protected] or on Twitter @theSandraG
