Ice Cube Teams Up With MTV Studios For Potential “Celebrity Deathmatch” Revival

Yes, please.

Ice Cube and his producers at Cube Vision are teaming up with Eric Fogel (creator) and MTV Studios in producing a revival of legendary series Celebrity Deathmatch. The series is being pitched as a weekly series for streaming services (go ahead and cross off Netflix as a potential suitor) where Ice Cube would star for a potential 2019 bow. This revival follows the announcement from MTV Studios from earlier in the year where we might be getting reboots of Daria, Aeon Flux, and other MTV classic series but for streaming services.

During the late nineties, the Monday Night Wars between World Championship Wrestling and World Wrestling Entertainment were at a fever pitch. Chances are if you went to a high school during this era and you were a guy, you probably owned a T-shirt donned with some sort of Stone Cold Steve Austin slang.

So why not put him in a series that features claymation over-the-top violence refereed by Judge Mills Lane? BOOM! Celebrity Deathmatch. The Eric Fogel series was a stop-motion animated series featuring clay models set to look like some of the era’s biggest celebrities doing a fight to a usually brutal and gratifying death. Typically the two combatants had some sort of correlation that leads to a score needing to be settled with steel chairs and whatever else the producers felt like throwing in the ring. Almost as important as the action in the ring, the ringside commentary provided by Johnny Gomez and Nick Diamond toeing the line between Al Michaels/John Madden and Statler/Waldorf.

The series lasted four seasons which is actually kind of impressive given its network home’s reputation for canceling shows after a single season. A short-lived revival didn’t do much to assuage fans’ wishes for the original cast and show.