The new Tom and Jerry movie just got described as a rom-com in the style of La La Land, and somehow, that’s the most exciting thing to happen to this franchise in decades.
Details about the project have been swirling since late 2024, but it was a recent interview with Variety that finally gave us something concrete.
Rashida Jones, Will McCormack, and Michael Govier were tapped to write the new Tom and Jerry feature for Warner Bros. Animation, and when Jones and McCormack sat down with Variety this week to promote their new A24 film The Invite, they revealed exactly what angle they’re taking with the beloved cat and mouse.
It’s not what anyone expected. And that’s exactly the point.
The characters have been at each other’s throats since they first started co-starring in MGM shorts in 1940. Over 80 years of chasing, smashing, and elaborate cartoon violence. Tom has never caught Jerry. Jerry has never fully escaped Tom. And yet, millions of kids across generations have watched that loop repeat with genuine delight. The question every new creative team has to answer is: what’s actually left to say?
Jones and McCormack think they know.
“Love Is Worth Fighting For”
In their version, Tom and Jerry are each rescued by human characters who fall in love, and while the duo try to break up that relationship, McCormack says it is only because they want to be loved themselves. He describes it as a rom-com in the style of La La Land, with the logline “Love is worth fighting for.”
That reframe is genuinely smart. The chaos has always been there on the surface, but the question of why these two keep fighting, what’s underneath all the frying pans and dynamite, is one the original shorts never really had to answer. Jones and McCormack are making it the whole movie.
McCormack’s exact words are worth sitting with: “Why are these characters fighting so much? Because they want to be seen, and they want to be loved.” For a franchise best known for slapstick carnage, that’s a quietly radical pitch.
A romantic comedy in the style of La La Land may seem unusual for Tom and Jerry, but it is familiar territory for this writing team. Jones and McCormack wrote Celeste and Jesse Forever, a romantic comedy-drama, and The Invite, a relationship comedy about two couples at a crossroads. These are writers who know how to make emotional messiness funny without stripping out the feeling. That track record matters here.
Why This Team Is the Right Bet
Through their production banner Le Train Train, Jones and McCormack work as writers, directors, and producers, with credits that include Toy Story 4 and The Invite.
Their Pixar work alone tells you they understand how to operate inside a beloved legacy property without dismantling what made it work. Toy Story 4 was polarising in some corners of the fandom, but nobody walked out thinking it felt lazy or cheap. The emotional craft was there.
McCormack also co-wrote and co-directed the Oscar-winning short If Anything Happens I Love You, released on Netflix in 2020. That film wrecked people in under 13 minutes. The idea that the same sensibility is being applied to Tom and Jerry, one of animation’s most recognisable duos, is a genuinely intriguing prospect.
What this team does better than almost anyone working in animation right now is find the emotional truth inside a genre premise without making it feel like homework. The new Tom and Jerry has a setup that could play as pure comedy: two pets sabotaging their owners’ romance. But if Jones and McCormack treat it the same way they’ve treated every other relationship they’ve written, the chaos will earn its tears.
No director has been announced for the project yet, and the voice cast remains unknown. There’s still a lot of road between here and a finished film. But the creative foundation is more promising than anything this franchise has had in years.
Tom and Jerry: Forbidden Compass, a separate animated feature from Warner Bros., hits US theaters on September 9, 2026.
You May Also Like: