21 Cartoons for Kids That Deserve Gritty Reboots

There was an era between the mid-2000s and the mid-2010s when Hollywood was obsessed with dark reimaginings of existing IP. It started with Christopher Nolan’s Batman, spread to just about every other superhero, sank its claws into the public domain, and finally infected everything within its reach. We made jokes about it, and they made a gritty Fresh Prince reboot called Bel-Air, which sounds like a joke but is both real and in its third season.

It’s possible, though, that they didn’t go far enough. There’s real potential in the idea of gritty reboots of properties even further away from the target tone — let’s say, oh, just about everything in the Nickelodeon afterschool lineup between 1996 and 2002. That’s pretty much what Redditors itemized when user ItookAnumber4 asked r/AskReddit, “What kids’ cartoon would be super awesome if made into an R-rated movie (animated or live action)?”