Last Week in Animation: June 12th By: Alex Bonilla

Welcome to Overly Animated’s Last Week in Animation! This is a recurring series where we aggregate the news items most relevant to fans of the shows we cover regularly, as well as interesting tidbits on other animated television and film projects.

Animation’s In Memoriam

Adam West, the actor that represented Batman to film and television audiences for the first time, died of complications from leukemia at the age of 88 on Saturday. After playing the Caped Crusader, he suffered through typecasting and Hollywood disdain of his role, falling out of fame once the 1970s rolled around. However, his 21st century career renaissance was propelled by a wildly successful guest spot on Seth MacFarlane’s adult animation Family Guy, where West played the mayor. In voice work, some may also remember him playing his animated self in The Fairly OddParents. [The Hollywood Reporter]

Peter Sallis, the Englishman most famous for providing the voice of Wallace in Aardman Animations’ Wallace and Gromit franchise, passed away peacefully at home at the age of 96. Prior to first taking the Wallace role in 1989, he had also performed voice work for other early stop motion shorts, such as The Wind in the Willows and Oh! Mr. Toad. Sallis won a voice acting award at the Annies for his work in the 2005 film Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. [Animation Magazine]

Trailers

Voltron: Legendary Defender has a targeted Netflix ad out publicizing the upcoming release of Season 3, which will drop on August 4 according to the trailer.

Coco released its second trailer, with a bit of extra footage from the first teaser released by Pixar. Alongside the trailer, there was a press release boasting about the all-Hispanic cast, perhaps in an effort to continue distinguishing itself from the similarly-premised but more celebrity-casted The Book of Life. Some of the new names that are part of Coco include Gael Garcia Bernal, Benjamin Bratt, Alfonso Arau, Gabriel Iglesias, Cheech Marin and Lombardo Boyar. [Animation Magazine]

Lupin the Third: Part IV will premiere on Adult Swim’s Toonami block on June 17 at 2 AM. As the title suggests, this is the fourth incarnation of the anime following the grandson of a world-famous thief. It aired in Italy and Japan two years ago, and will finally make its way to the Americas. The second incarnation of the anime was one of the earliest to air on Adult Swim, so the franchise has a close history with the network.

Other News and Notes