We're concluding our series on Hanna-Barbera's Class of 1974, marking their 40th anniversary this year, with the studio's 1st all-live-action series, Korg: 70, 000 B. C..
Veteran writer-producer Fred Freiberger (ex-Star Trek) had been writing for Hanna-Barbera for a couple of years, in what I think was his first foray into animated programming (he wrote for Josie & the Pussycats in Outer Space & Super Friends), and that allowed him to pitch Korg to Joe Barbera, who in turn ran the pitch by then-ABC executive Squire Brushnell, who was in charge of children's programming back then. Unfortunately, insofar as I knew, Korg would end up being Freiberger's coda at H-B. He would later resurface as a producer and/or writer on Gerry Anderson's Space: 1999 just a couple of years later.
70skidvid reminds us of Korg. The video is taken from a short-lived run on TNT:
If memory serves me correctly, Korg, narrated by Burgess Meredith, aired directly opposite NBC's canine take on The Fugitive, that being Run, Joe, Run, which was renewed for a 2nd year, while Korg, like the rest of the freshman class from ABC, was cancelled. It was either Joe or Land of the Lost, that much I'm certain of.
Anyway, the question becomes one of whether or not WB would be willing to take another shot at it. Like Filmation's family of live-action shows, H-B hired some educational consultants. GEICO has seemingly retired their modern-day caveman gimmick, so there's a chance that Korg could be rebooted, but not as a weekly series. No, the vision I have is to make it more of a historical drama in a miniseries format, which would give Time Warner the option of airing it on either TNT or TruTV. With Meredith having long since passed on, as has Joe narrator Paul Frees, if they need someone to be a narrator, there are plenty of options to be had.
What do you think?
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