Jimmy Neutron Revival Project

This is my very first hub and will serve as an introduction to the project and what it is about.

To understand what the purpose of this project is and what myself and other fans hope to accomplish, we need to start at the beginning.

Ten years ago on December 21st, 2001, Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius blasted into theaters. It follows Jimmy Neutron on an adventure of a lifetime when his parents and all of the other adults in his hometown of Retroville are kidnapped by invading aliens called "Yolkians." Jimmy and his friends along with the rest of the neighborhood kids and his faithful robot dog Goddard blast off into space to rescue them.

The movie did very well in theaters. The total budget for the film was $25,000,000 and it made an estimated $18,554,948 during its opening weekend. When the movie had finally completed its theater run in April of 2002, its overall earnings were $80,920,948. It went on to receive an Oscar nomination. While the film lost to Shrek, this movie remains to date the only Nickelodeon computer-animated film to have received an Oscar nomination.

Source: Internet Movie Database

In the summer of 2002, the spinoff TV series of Jimmy Neutron premiered its first episode. 4.3 million viewers were watching it and it was very well-received. After the first episode aired, ratings were always very good and it was often in the top three shows (which at the time were Spongebob Squarepants, Fairly Odd Parents, and Jimmy Neutron, respectively) for the first couple of seasons.

The show followed the further adventures of Jimmy Neutron with his friends Carl Wheezer and Sheen Estevez, Goddard, and Cindy Vortex and Libby Folfax who make regular appearances later on in the series.

What fans really enjoyed about the show was the fact that it made learning math and science fun and had the perfect balance of humor, action, adventure, and even romance. There were also real-life situations that could be applied to the real world such as puberty (e.g. Jimmy and Cindy's love/hate friendship, which later turns into a relationship at the end of the third season), the value of friendship, and the instillation of positive morals and values.

The series started to decline in the ratings in its third season which aired from 2004-2006. Part of why this happened was because there were several other countries that were airing new episodes before the U.S. When websites like Youtube started coming to life, many of these episodes were uploaded to the internet for people to watch. This meant that fewer viewers were watching the episodes on TV when they eventually aired which in turn hurt ratings.

Around 2005 or 2006, Nickelodeon decided that Jimmy Neutron was no longer profitable and cost too much to make and used that reasoning along with the declining ratings from the third season to end the series. The reason Nickelodeon gave the animation company that worked on Jimmy Neutron was that the show had enough episodes for syndication and therefore, no new episodes needed to be made. Nickelodeon did, however, leave the door open for other possibilities in the Neutron universe.

DNA Productions, the animation company that worked on Jimmy Neutron, was shut down in 2006 after its final theatrical production, The Ant Bully, was made. Jimmy Neutron's sudden abrupt end was a huge loss to the company. No other networks or production companies were coming forward with shows or movies they wanted them to make, which meant there was no work for the animators. DNA had no choice but to shut their doors. Most of the animators were laid off, but have since found work with other animation companies.

In 2008, after several years of talks, the remaining producers and animators from The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius got together to work on a pilot for a new series that would be later called Planet Sheen. They showed the sample pilot to Nickelodeon animation executives, who were impressed. The series was greenlit and work began on the show right away.

It took about two years for the entire first season to be completed. Since DNA Productions was now defunct, Omation Animation Company (Steve Oedekerk's animation company) stepped up to do the animation for the series. They were still working on a few more episodes of the show, but there were finally enough finished episodes ready to be shown.

On October 2nd, 2010, Planet Sheen premiered alongside another new series, Butch Hartman's T.U.F.F. Puppy as part of Nickelodeon's new Saturday morning block. Both Planet Sheen and T.U.F.F. Puppy were well-received and had excellent ratings.

Since Nickelodeon did not have an official Facebook fan page for this show like they did for their other shows, a devoted Jimmy Neutron fan and enthusiast created a fan page for the show, which now has over 1,600 members as of December 2011.

Ratings for the show were pretty steady during the first couple of episodes, but unfortunately started to decline mid-season. After the first episode aired, many other episodes that followed it started receiving a mixed bag of reviews with more negative reviews than positive ones.

It is currently unknown if the series will be renewed for another season, but there are a few unaired episodes left.

Now that I have provided an overview of Jimmy Neutron's complete history, I can move on to the mission of our project and what we hope to achieve.

In 2004, I found out through several sources who worked on the Jimmy Neutron series that its current third season might be the final one. I was the first person on the internet to come up with a petition to save the show. In December of 2004, the Request for a 4th Season of Jimmy Neutron petition went online. The goal at the time was 2,000 signatures. It took a long time to get there. As of December 2011, there are over 1,800 signatures, but because there are several hundred duplicate signatures, the real actual total is unknown.

Once it was discovered that there would be a spinoff of Jimmy Neutron, the Save Jimmy Neutron campaign was discontinued.

In 2011, something unexpected happened that brought me, a now 28-year-old fan, out of retirement - an unprecedented amount of new fanfiction on the popular fanfiction.net website along with an explosion of new fans on tumblr, I Dream of Jimmy (a Jimmy Neutron fansite), and even the official Jimmy Neutron message board on Nick.com.

In light of these recent events, I decided to take another step up to the plate only on a much larger scale. In April of 2011 a petition project turned into the birth of what is now known as the Jimmy Neutron Revival Project.

A lot of today's current youth programming is instilling the wrong kinds of values in our kids and is essentially teaching them that violence, destruction of property, and irresponsible, immature behavior is acceptable. Another thing these shows promote is the idea that education is not very important. Without education, America's future for our youth will continue to decline.

Jimmy Neutron challenged viewers of all ages to think outside of the box.

First and foremost, Jimmy and his friends (Carl, Sheen, Cindy, and Libby) are often featured in a classroom setting in dozens of episodes.

When they are not in a classroom setting, they are off on adventures through space or other places on Earth, including their fictional hometown of Retroville. These adventures were often science or math-based and piqued young minds' interest in exploration and discovery. The space-themed episodes gave viewers a chance to see what life might be like outside of our own solar system. These kinds of episodes have inspired a lot of fans to pursue careers in the space field, while episodes that involved experimentation have inspired other viewers to pursue careers in healthcare or other biological fields.

In addition to the above, Jimmy Neutron also taught children the value of respect and owning up to one's mistakes. Jimmy and his friends respected their parents and valued each other's friendship. Through the Jimmy and Cindy and Sheen and Libby pairings, we learned about relationships, which is a normal part of puberty and growing up.

From the show's abrupt end in 2006 through now, fans have continuously expressed interest in a new season of the show. On the official Jimmy Neutron forum at Nickelodeon's official website, there have been literally dozens of posts from many younger fans, begging for Nickelodeon to bring the show back. On social media sites like Facebook and tumblr, older fans (teens and adults) have been expressing an interest in seeing Jimmy Neutron return. Many petitions have came and went with no success. I want this one to be successful.

This educational cause is something that is very close to my heart. I was a child of the 1980s and 90s and a lot of the animated programs I saw back in those days have instilled a lot of the positive morals and values I have in my own life today. Not to mention that these shows made education fun. Jimmy Neutron was a breath of fresh air and a throwback to all of the shows I grew up watching as a child.

The mission of this project is to convince Nickelodeon that Jimmy Neutron not only deserves to be back on the air for another season but is still very much needed on this network. We need Nickelodeon to know how much of an impact this series has made on so many people's lives and how much this show means to everyone.

Right now on the Jimmy Neutron Revival tumblr blog, there are close to 100 followers and only about 230+ fans on our Facebook fan page. I would like to turn this into thousands of followers and "likes". The more supporters we have, the better likelihood there is of getting Nickelodeon's attention about this cause.

In addition, I have started two new petitions on change.org and care2. We need at least 20,000 signatures or more to get Nickelodeon and Viacom's attention. A few hundred or a few thousand will not be enough.

This is going to be a pretty huge effort and I am going to need a lot of fans to help me make the possibility of Jimmy Neutron's revival a reality.

Below are some links to all of the sites that have been created for this massive project:

Official Website

Facebook

Google Plus

twitter

Tumblr

Change.org

care2

How can you help? It's simple.

• Visit the website to learn more about the project.
• Become a "liker" of the fan page on Facebook. If you don't have a Facebook account, I have also created a group on Google Plus.
• Follow the project on twitter to get the latest updates when you're on the go.
• Follow the tumblr blog where I will post daily and weekly updates on the petitions and other information.
• And most importantly SIGN THE PETITION. I have created two petitions on two different websites. The reason I did this is because Change.org asks for more detailed information about you and care2 doesn't ask for as much. So you have the freedom to sign whichever one you are comfortable with.

On days when Nickelodeon's sister channel, Nicktoons, runs any kind of Jimmy Neutron marathon, these will be known as trending days where we will make Jimmy Neutron a trending topic on twitter. I will send out a notification well in advance so everyone will know when they are.

I am working on the creation of a DeviantArt group where fans can showcase their fanfiction and artwork. Showing is just as important as telling Nickelodeon how much we care about the show.

There will be a letter-writing campaign too, and I will go into more specifics on that at a later time.

In closing, I would like to thank everyone for reading this hub. I am still looking for a few more volunteers to help me run my project, especially on Facebook and Google+.

If you have any questions about this project or would like to volunteer to help, please drop me an e-mail at gottablast2001@aol.com.

All images are properties of Nickelodeon and Viacom. This is a project that is designed by fans for fans and is not for profit.