Johnny Gomez & Orchestra
Celebrity Deathmatch is an adult stop-motion claymation series created by Eric Fogel for MTV. It is a parody of sports entertainment programs that depicts claymated caricatures of various celebrities engaging in highly stylized professional wrestling matches. The series was known for its large amount of gory violence, including combatants employing different abilities and weapons to deliver particularly brutal attacks, resulting in exaggerated physical injuries.
Two television pilots were broadcast on MTV on January 1 and 25, 1998. The series properly premiered on May 14, 1998, and ended its original run on June 6, 2002, airing for 77 episodes. A series of German shorts, Celebrity Deathmatch Hits Germany, aired on June 21, 2001, but it was poorly received from the fans, which was rumored to be the source of the show's cancellation. For a brief period during that year, reruns of the series aired on broadcast network UPN. Early in 2003, a film based on the series was announced by MTV to be in production, but the project was canceled by the end of the year.
In 2005, MTV2 announced the revival of the show as part of their Sic 'Em Friday programming block. Originally set to return in November 2005, the premiere was pushed back to June 10, 2006 as part of a block with two other animated series, Where My Dogs At? and The Adventures of Chico and Guapo. The revival series was produced without any involvement from Fogel. While the first four seasons were animated by Fogelmania Productions and TakToon Enterprise, the series' fifth and sixth seasons were produced by Cuppa Coffee Studios, and the premiere drew over 2.5 million viewers, becoming MTV2's highest rated season premiere ever. It was canceled again in 2007.
In April 2015, MTV2 announced a reboot of the series. However, in November 2016, Fogel stated via Twitter that MTV did not pick up the pilot to the series.
On December 6, 2018, MTV Studios announced a reimagining of the show was set to return in 2019 with Ice Cube as star and executive producer. However, no announcements, updates, nor new information have surfaced since the announcement and it has been speculated to have been quietly cancelled. As of 2025, the revival from 2006 is available to watch on Paramount+.
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