I get the idea. Mascots go crazy and kill people. It's not a horrible idea.
The question I have is why do you base this on a kid friendly franchise? Why don't you make up your own characters? It's not like having the Bannana Splits as characters is going to help sell this movie to people.
Continuity, even in a "shared" comics universe is often insignificant if not largely detrimental to the quality of a comic.
Immortal X-Men - Once & Future- X-Cellent - X-Men: Red
Nobody cares about what you don't like, they barely care about what you do like.
As for the OG show, it's largely a cartoon vehicle in my memory.
Seems like they showed Adam Ant and Secret Squirrel pretty often.
As for the film, it feels a lot like the second season of Happy!. Though it's hard to tell just how much of that is what I see versus what they are actually doing.
People who remember the Banana Splits won't want to see them like this, and people who don't remember the Banana Splits won't be interested in them.
I don't understand the thinking in the entertainment industry these days. It's like the Demon Lord of Franchise Whoring is standing over them with a whip, screaming "There are three people in Iowa who remember that fondly! Option it! Option it!"
Tra La La Tra Le La La ....... quietly sobbing in the corner.
That is because you got folks who don't want to PAY creators of new stuff-so you go with what you have rights to.
Look at the Hasbro Universe-GI Joe & Transformers were in the same universe to begin with. They threw in MASK, Action Man, ROM, Visionaries & Micronaughts. I guess you could toss in EXO Squad since some of those toys were from MASK (I think).
Heck look at Robotech that was 3 different shows merged into one. Southern Cross did not take place on Earth and they were all French.
Actually there is a lot of stories you could use for that to work. I remember a book series in the 7th grade that was all kid level horror stories. One had a story about scouts and their scout leader-who was a werewolf and ate all 4 of them.I don't know if there's enough stories that are short enough to read and still get enough of them into a film to work.
And there is NO rule to say you can condense stories that you own the rights to. Night Gallery did that for some spinoff they had in order to include it in the syndication package. MST3K did it as well.
Finally the Sour Grapes Bunch will get what's coming to them!
In all seriousness though, I hope HB knows that the franchise won't be able to backpedal away from this. You can't go back to kid friendly cartoon characters/ mascots after turning them into mass murdering horror monsters.
"The White Queen welcomes you, TO DIE!"