Betty Boop's Return to Fame

Betty Boop's Return to Fame is a 2023 American live-action/animated action-adventure comedy film based on the Fleischer Studios character Betty Boop, directed by Matthew O'Callaghan and John Musker and written by Don Hall. Produced by Paramount Pictures, Syco Entertainment, Smashup Productions and Fuzzy Door Productions, the film stars Chris Hemsworth, Seth MacFarlane, Mayim Bialik, Jillian Bell, and Keegan-Michael Key; Cindy Robinson voices the titular Betty while Maurice LaMarche, Dan Castellaneta, Mark Hamill, and Billy West provide the voices of the other main animated characters. The film follows Toon Talk interviewer Gary Oppenheimer (Hemsworth) talking Betty into making a comeback, which she agrees to if she does it with her old friends/co-stars.

Betty Boop's Return to Fame premiered in Hollywood on September 5, 2023, and was released in the United States on the family-oriented streaming service Paramount Prime on September 12. It received generally mixed-to-positive reviews from critics with praise for its cast, meta humor, faithfulness to the Fleischer shorts, and its portrayal of the title character, while criticism was towards the premise.

Plot
In a world co-populated by humans and cartoon characters, Betty Boop, who started off as an anthropomorphic dog, meets Bimbo during production on her debut short Dizzy Dishes; the two later started dating even after Betty was redesigned to her current human appearance, until she and Bimbo went separate ways after the Hays Code had enforced forbidding any inter-species relationships. During her time working on her short subjects, she got to meet all her new additions of characters—Koko, Grampy, Pudgy, and Sally Swing—she would befriend in the long run. As her popularity was decreasing after the Hays Code made Betty lose her signature appeal, she had the idea of having her following shorts focus on her co-stars such as Grampy and Pudgy, which had not caught on. With her last short in 1939, Rhythm on the Reservation, she found herself out of work to the point of finding occupation outside of cartoons, but found herself struggling from the paparazzi and fans harassing her every now and then. She then made her comeback in Who Framed Roger Rabbit in 1988, followed by appearing in her own television special The Betty Boop Movie Mystery a year later, reuniting with Bimbo.

Thirty years had passed and Betty currently resides in Boston, Massachusetts and has become accustomed to modern technology over the years. She is currently interviewed by Toon Talk host Gary Oppenheimer, who is a big fan of her shorts; after her interview, Gary goes on about his admiration towards her legacy and says she should return to the public, in which she has little interest for considering how her she has in other mediums and in passing, to which Gary suggests making a comeback through a series of shorts on streaming for younger audiences; Betty decides to go along with his proposal if she can get her friends in on it.

Arriving back to Hollywood, she makes her mark on social media to announce her return and mingling with the various bystanders along with getting selfies and videos while on her way to the Paramount studio. Arriving, she meets vice-president Lucas Majors who agrees to give her idea the green light if she gets her friends for an announcement on Monday rather than autonomously announce it herself. With help from Grampy (who now teaches at the California Institute of Technology), joins and helps Betty find her old co-stars, starting with Sally Swing, who now works as a stand-in musical conductor; Koko the Clown, who has taken up the occupation of a birthday clown; and Bimbo, who currently acts on stage and musicals as a means of reminisce. Bimbo, upset about Betty's sudden change in lifestyle over the years, chooses not to join her.

Returning to Los Angeles, the group performs their lines while waiting to see Majors. Unbeknownst to them, Pudgy spots Majors and sneaks off and overhears a conversation of the vice-president disposing of her out of sheer distaste of reintroducing classic franchises; Pudgy tells Betty via talking with signs and Betty storms in Majors' office to confront him whereas Majors assures her that he means disposing of her as in "firing her" if she does bad, with Betty believing him. Heading out, they find Bimbo outside the studio lot, having decided to join her in her comeback. At Bimbo's mansion in Beverly Hills, he lets them rehearse. Pudgy informs Bimbo, who understands him due to being a dog as well, about Majors' intentions and the latter tells the others about it, with Gary's camerawoman and best friend Carol Pearce suggesting they expose him.

Headed down to the studio, Betty sends Pudgy inside to record the evidence with her phone while keeping out of sight. Pudgy ends up caught by Horce upon recording Majors' confession, with Majors subsequently calling the group on and withdrawals the offer. Pudgy then retrieves the phone after freeing himself from Horce's grasp and runs out of the studio, before being apprehended by Animal Control for not having a collar on him, along with dropping and damaging Betty's phone in the process, resulting in losing their evidence. Majors' assistant Isabel, who rescues Pudgy from the animal shelter and returns him to Betty, decides to help Betty and her friends having been further disgusted by Majors' intentions.

The next day, Majors arrives to the studio where he ends up lured by Carol into the their trap, where he encounters Isabel, Betty and her friends, and Paramount Pictures chairman and CEO Brian Robbins who discovers about Majors' rejection and fires him for negligence. After Majors' firing, Paramount green lights Betty's comeback series.

Cast
Additional voices include Jeff Bergman, Dee Bradley Baker, Eric Bauza, Tara Strong, Billy West and Kath Soucie, with the primary cast members LaMarche, Castelleneta and MacFarlane proving as well.
 * Cindy Robinson as Betty Boop, the once popular Fleischer Studios character now resides in Boston, Massachusetts to get away from her Hollywood lifestyle and had grown accustom to modern technology such as a smartphone she posses.
 * Chris Hemsworth as Gareth "Gary" Oppenheimer, host of his own talk show series Toon Talk and fanboy of the Betty Boop franchise.
 * Seth MacFarlane as Lucas Majors, the surly yet understanding vice-president of Paramount Pictures.
 * Mayim Bialik as Carol "Carrie" Pearce, Gary's camerawoman and close friend since high school.
 * Jillian Bell as Isabel, Majors' "yes-man" assistant.
 * Keegan-Michael Key as Horce, a computer-animated stick figure-esque character of a pilot episode to a scrapped unnamed series who serves as Majors' bodyguard.
 * Maurice LaMarche as Bimbo, Betty's boyfriend and best friend of Koko's. Following his last work with Betty, he has gone on to perform stage and musical theatre.
 * Dan Castellaneta as Grampy, an elderly genius inventor who is on good terms with Betty. He currently teaches part time at the California Institute of Technology.
 * Mae Questel as Pudgy, Betty's pet dog. Archival recordings from the late Questel are utilized in this film, rather than hiring a voice actor/actress to provide his vocal effects.
 * Laura Bailey as Sally Swing, one of Betty's old friends who only appeared in her own self-titled short and later became a stand-in conductor.

Early attempts
Development on a feature film based on Betty Boop began back in the 1990s, starting with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer originally set to distribute and release the film in 1994 with Lili and Richard Zanuck as executive producers. Production for the MGM-distributed film was canceled from studio head changes and licensing rights disagreements with the Fleischer representatives. Betty, who was to be voiced by the late Mary Kay Bergman, would have been a waitress at the Greasy Spoon, desperate to meet her long lost vaudevillian father Benny, an original character named Johnny Davenport, who would have been voiced by Harry Connick Jr., would have been Betty's love interest.

In 2014, Simon Cowell's Syco Entertainment and Animal Logic had announced a partnership to create music-based animated/live-action film in development with Lady Gaga in the titular role, set for release in 2016 before being cancelled.

Pre-production
When Paramount Pictures, the distributor of the original Fleischer Studios shorts, was persuaded to distribute the film, production began with Cowell retaining his job as producer while animation veterans Matthew O'Callaghan and John Musker were hired as the film's directors and Walt Disney Animation Studios employee Don Hall as film writer. Seth MacFarlane was hired to co-produce under his Fuzzy Door Productions company and later announced to co-star in the film with his frequent collaborator Walter Murphy as composer.

With the film's script, the film took influence of The Muppets (2011) and Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers (2022) for its premise of Betty reuniting with her former co-stars and blending live-action and animation; the film intended in including non-Paramount characters to cameo, with Walt Disney Studios, Warner Bros., Universal Studios, and Sony Pictures licensing out their characters for the film.