Pepe Le Pew Was Cut From “Space Jam: A New Legacy”
Apparently Lola Bunny wasn’t the only Looney Tunes character who got a major visual makeover for the upcoming Space Jam sequel, Space Jam: A New Legacy. But at least Lola is still on the team! Pepe Le Pew’s makeover was a head-to-toe situation in that he was removed completely from the film. I’m sure you won’t ever be able to begin to guess why a character whose entire personality trait is that he’s a horny boundary-pushing skunk was axed from an updated Looney Tunes lineup.
Pepe Le Pew, the full-time lady cat stalker from France, was most recently the subject of a New York Times article about pulling six Dr. Seuss books over racist depictions. The author of the article, Charles M. Blow, argued that Pepe’s existence contributed to rape culture. You don’t even have to put too much effort into such an argument since every Pepe Le Pew cartoon ends with the feeling that it’s only a matter of time before Penelope the Cat grabs a phone and tweets out a long #MeToo thread about him.
The New York Times article got people talking about cancel culture, and plenty of people agreed that Pepe is kind of gross. But, that article and the subsequent Pepe backlash isn’t the reason why Pepe will be absent from Space Jam: A New Legacy. According to Deadline, the decision to cut Pepe was made a while ago during filming:
Deadline has learned that a hybrid live-action animation scene between Jane the Virgin actress Greice Santo and Pepe Le Pew, shot back in June 2019 for Space Jam 2 was left on the cutting room floor.
Sources add that Warner Bros. planned to acknowledge Pepe’s reputation as a serial harasser and use it as a lesson about consent. The only problem is, the scene allegedly begins with Pepe sexually harassing a woman.
Pepe was set to appear in a black-and-white Casablanca-like Rick’s Cafe sequence. Pepe, playing a bartender, starts hitting on a woman at the bar played by Santo. He begins kissing her arm, which she pulls back, then slamming Pepe into the chair next to hers. She then pours her drink on Pepe, and slaps him hard, sending him spinning in a stool, which is then stopped by LeBron James’ hand. James and Bugs Bunny are looking for Lola, and Pepe knows her whereabouts. Pepe then tells the guys that Penelope cat has filed a restraining order against him. James makes a remark in the script that Pepe can’t grab other Tunes without their consent.
Deadline says the scene was filmed under the supervision of the film’s original director, Terence Nance. Terence was later replaced with director Malcolm D. Lee, and that’s when Pepe’s scenes disappeared. No more live-action scenes with Pepe were filmed, and Pepe wasn’t ever animated. A rep for Greice Santo spoke to Deadline, and she’s pretty mad her scene was cut because she wanted to be a part of the lesson on consent:
“This was such a big deal for Greice to be in this movie. Even though Pepe is a cartoon character, if anyone was going to slap a sexual harasser like him, Greice wished it would be her. Now the scene is cut, and she doesn’t have that power to influence the world through younger generations who’ll be watching Space Jam 2, to let younger girls and younger boys know that Pepe’s behavior is unacceptable.”
When reached for comment, Warner Bros. didn’t have anything to say about Pepe’s disappearance from the film. This also isn’t the first time the Looney Tunes have changed along with progress. When Warner Bros. decided to reboot Looney Tunes for HBO Max, they decided Elmer Fudd and Yosemite Sam would be retiring their firearms.
There’s really no way Warner Bros. could have brought back Pepe Le Pew because we all know what that guy’s deal is. Not to mention that even if you do overhaul his character, it will still be a mess. That gross, disrespectful French creep will come up in conversation, and inevitably someone will ask, “Oh no, what did Gérard Depardieu do now?”
Pic: Warner Bros.