Finally, duck season is back. According to an update on the website of the Annecy Festival, which takes place in June, this year’s lineup will feature a theatrical short starring Daffy Duck titled Daffy Season. “The film finds Daffy Duck grappling with Elmer Fudd’s latest obsession—soccer—setting the stage for classic Looney Tunes chaos,” reads the official description. The subject matter will be especially timely, as the World Cup will be going on at the same time.
This marks the first time Daffy Duck will star in a theatrical short since 2012, when Daffy’s Rhapsody aired before Journey 2: The Mysterious Island. While Daffy’s Rhapsody came and went without much fanfare, the short was notable for its clever use of an archival recording by Looney Tunes legend Mel Blanc. Blanc, who died in 1989, had recorded the song “Daffy’s Rhapsody” for Capitol Records back in the 1950s. The 2012 short used that voice track, along with Billy West as Elmer Fudd to create a new cartoon.
Presumably, Daffy Season will consist of all original material, though the voice of Daffy has yet to be announced (my money’s on Eric Bauza, who voiced Daffy for The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie, which debuted at Annecy in 2024). Another detail yet to be disclosed is whether Daffy Season will be 3D animated, like Daffy’s Rhapsody, or 2D, like the classic Looney Tunes shorts. While Looney Tunes fans like myself tend to prefer the latter, Daffy Season’s directors Todd Wilderman and Hamish Grieve have more experience in directing 3D animated films. Wilderman co-directed Open Season 2 and Abominable, while Grieve directed the Paramount Plus 3D animated film Rumble. These two are also writing the short along with Jenny Jaffe (Teen Titans Go! and 2024’s Ren & Stimpy reboot).
Regardless of the style of animation, the very fact that Warner Bros. is making a Daffy Duck theatrical short at all is cause for celebration, as theatrical shorts were the original outlet for the classic Looney Tunes cartoons, including Daffy’s first short, Porky’s Duck Hunt from 1937. As the Annecy update noted, Daffy Season is being released not only for the World Cup, but to mark Daffy’s upcoming 90th birthday, a milestone that, characteristically, will likely be upstaged when Bugs Bunny turns 90 in 2030.