'Mr. Bug Goes to Town'

(a.k.a. "Hoppity Goes to Town" and "Bugville") It was originally meant to be an adaptation of Maurice Maeterlinck's The Life of the Bee, but the Fleischers were unable to get the rights to the book, and the studio came up with its own story inspired by The Life of the Bee instead and also added from Capra-esque elements. "Mr. Bug Goes to Town" was beset by problems early on. To produce their first animated feature, "Gulliver's Travels", the Fleischers had moved their studio from New York City to Miami, Florida, and expanded their staff, at great expense. Immediately after "Gulliver" was completed and released, the studio began development on a second feature, eventually going into production on "Mr. Bug". The studio was already deeply in debt from the production on the film, production on the Popeye series, and the production on the amazing Superman series, and the Fleischers were forced to sell their studio to Paramount mid-way through production on Mr. Bug, on May 24, 1941. Paramount kept the Fleischers in production, but they were required to deliver unsigned letters of resignation to Paramount, to be used at the studio's discretion, as the brothers were growing apart. "Mr. Bug" was originally going to be released on November of 1941, but since the Fleischer's rival, Disney, released "Dumbo" weeks earlier, Paramount changed the date to December of the same year, but "Mr. Bug" unfortunately went into a, then unrealized, trap of terrible timing. Having the misfortune of opening two days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, "Mr. Bug" was a financial disaster and led to the ousting of Max and Dave Fleischer, from the studio they had established in 1919, and reorganized the company as Famous Studios. Paramount later re-released "Mr. Bug" as "Hoppity Goes to Town". Though the film is still under copyright, there was multiple re-releases on home video (with inferior image quality) throughout the 70's to it's recent DVD release by Legend Films, which they re-titled the film again to "Bugville". The original three strip Technicolor negatives are held at The UCLA Film and Television Archive in Los Angeles. That material is owned by Viacom (which has licensed that part of the library (which includes "Mr. Bug", many of the Betty Boops, the Puppettoons, and others) -the Republic Entertainment part - to Lionsgate, who has no financial incentive to spend the money to restore and market the film on DVD unless they sell the rights back to Paramount, which would be the logical choice since Lionsgate is primarily about selling and earning). Now with it's YouTube arrival, the "Hoppity" version was used instead of it's recent DVD accident, and let's hope that eventually the film will finally be given a proper home video release, maybe even a restored version (especially after Warner's Popeye and Superman sets.) But until then what we have is this YouTube upload, so I hope you guys enjoy! Mr. Bug / Hoppity (C) 1941 Paramount Pictures -The releases on home video were done by Legend Films, Republic Pictures, Goodtimes Home Video, and several others.- Oh and before I forget... If you want a copy yourself (in VHS or DVD) search and type "Hoppity" here: http://www.nostalgiafamilyvideo.com/