Out of Jimmy's Head espouses a "bent" world view. As the result of an accident, Jimmy Roberts requires an emergency brain transplant and ends up with the brain of the world's greatest cartoonist. All Out of Jimmy's Head images © Ca

In December 2006, Re-Animated, Cartoon Network's first made-for-TV movie to combine live-action and animation, premiered as the top-rated movie ever on the network among its core viewers, boys and girls aged 6-11. Its performance surpassed other highly rated Cartoon Network movies of the past, including Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends: Good Wilt Hunting and Codename: Kids Next Door: Operation Z.E.R.O. in 2006; Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends and Party Wagon in 2004; and Samurai Jack: The Trilogy in 2001.

"It stood out on our air," says Michael Ouweleen, svp, development and current series, for Cartoon Network. "It was the highest-rated thing on the network last year, and it holds up really well in repeats."

That success paved the way for the network's newest half-hour series, Out of Jimmy's Head. Like Re-Animated, Out of Jimmy's Head combines live-action and animation, and it marks the first time Cartoon Network has featured an episodic series containing mainly live-action footage. The show premieres September 14 -- coinciding with the DVD release of Re-Animatedon September 11-- and will air on Friday nights.

Out of Jimmy's Head begins where Re-Animated left off. "We always saw Re-Animated as being a pilot, depending on how it did," says Ouweleen, explaining that the original production was meant to work either as a standalone movie or as a launching pad for a series.

The success of made-for-TV movie Re-Animated paved the way for Out of Jimmy's Head. It premiered as the top-rated movie ever on the network among its core viewers. © & ™ 2006 Cartoon Network.

The story focuses on 12-year-old Jimmy Roberts (Dominic Janes, who has appeared on E.R. and in other films and TV shows), who, due to a trolley accident at the amusement park Gollyworld, required an emergency brain transplant and ended up with the frozen brain of the world's greatest cartoonist, Milt Appleday. As a result, Jimmy's head is full of a cast of crazy, Cartoon Network-style cartoon characters who wreak havoc on his everyday life. "It's Cartoon Network's take on the usual kid-in-middle-school set-up," explains Ouweleen. The series has a "bent" world view, he says, but one that is put forward in a realistic way. "It deals with the normal stuff that our audience is going through, or will be going through."

Production Changes
The original film's creators and writers, Adam Pava and Tim McKeon, will continue with the series as two of the executive producers -- they previously were writers on Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends and The Life & Times of Juniper Lee -- and lead actor Janes also comes over from the film. But the network made several changes, both in the production crew and in the casting, design and animation, to smooth the transition from film to TV.

The original movie was a production of Renegade Animation, Appleday Pictures and Cartoon Network. Ouweleen says Renegade did a great job on the long-form animation, but Cartoon Network Studios decided to take the animation production in-house for the TV series "just for the ease of it. There's a lot of back-and-forth between the cartoon and live-action." The series is a Brookwell McNamara Ent. production; Brookwell McNamara's previous credits include The Disney Channel's That's So Raven.