Gabriel Garza (TV series)

Gabriel Garza is an American animated television series created by Geo G. The series centers on the title character and his brothers Roge, Leno, and Cole, living in the town of Sinking Spring. They try to live in a normal everyday life to occasionally prevent attacks from a wicked mastermind named Vio and his henchmen, so the Garza brothers, along with their other friends, must team up to stop Vio's plans.

Geo created the title character for an unpublished comic book series in the early 1980s, and later reluctantly produced the animated short The Special Visitor, which became a part of The Toon Group in 1989 on the newly-formed Gingo network. Following this success, the sketch was developed into a Saturday morning cartoon and Gingo gave the staff a large amount of creative freedom, with the writers targeting both children and adults. Geo turned to voice actress Debi Derryberry, who had worked with him on The Toon Group, to voice the title character.

Gabriel Garza premiered on Gingo on March 16, 1991, and has been commercially successful, establishing the title character as the mascot of Gingo. It has spawned a successful franchise and adaptations into other media, such as comics and video games. It gained over 20 awards during its original run, including 4 Daytime Emmy Awards, 6 Kids' Choice Awards, and its own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The series garnered high ratings on Gingo and was the network's top-rated show ever since. This became Gingo's longest-running animated series of all time. The series ended on June 8, 2002 with a total of 12 seasons and 156 episodes, tying it as the seventh longest-running American animated television series. As a result of the show's popularity, a feature-length film titled The Gabriel Garza Movie was released in theaters on July 31, 2002, a month after the series finale.

In October 2017, Gingo announced that it had picked up the original series for 17 new half-hour episodes that began airing on October 6, 2018, with a total of 173 episodes aired so far. The series has been renewed for a fourteenth season, which premiered on September 21, 2019 and concluded on May 9, 2020. On November 17, 2019, Universal Pictures and Gingo announced that a new theatrical Gabriel Garza film was in development for a release on May 13, 2022, but was removed from the release schedule on April 1, 2020 following Universal's updated animation slate due to the 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic's impact on the film industry. In addition, a direct-to-video crossover film featuring the Disney Princesses titled Gabriel Garza + Disney Princess: Enchanted Mayhem is scheduled for release on both Blu-ray and Digital HD on June 9, 2020.

On March 28, 2020, Gingo renewed the series for a fifteenth season, which will contain the 200th episode.

Setting
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Characters
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Development
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Writing
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Voice actors
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Animation
The series' first season was produced by Hanna-Barbera, and was produced in association with Wang Film Productions in Taiwan, Mr. Big Cartoons in Australia, and Fil-Cartoons in the Philippines. However, due to difficulties with the animation studios, production was switched from Hanna-Barbera to Klasky Csupo for the second and third seasons. After the third season ended, the production went to Film Roman.

Music
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Broadcast
Although Gabriel Garza was originally set to premiere on November 3, 1990, the pilot, "Gabriel and the Big One / The First Toy Craze," aired on March 16, 1991, due to minor post-production delays.

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United States

 * Gingo (1991-2002, 2002-, 2018-)
 * USA Network (1998-2004)
 * Univision (Latin American Spanish, 1999-2008)
 * UPN (2003-06)
 * Telemundo (Latin American Spanish, 1995-2004, 2008-15)
 * Universal Kids (2017-)

Canada

 * YTV (English, 1991-2007, 2018-)
 * Teletoon (English/French, 1998-2004)
 * Gingo (2003-)
 * Teletoon Retro (English/French, 2007-2015)

Latin America & Brazil

 * Gingo (1991-)
 * ZAZ (1992-96)
 * Cablin (1993-94)
 * The Big Channel (1993-95)
 * Chilevision (1995-98)
 * Canal 5 (1998-2003, 2011, 2018-)
 * Cartoon Network (2005-2009)
 * Boomerang (2006-2008)
 * Magic Kids (1996-2006)
 * USA Network (????)
 * Rede Globo (1999-2005, 2018-)
 * TV Cultura (1992-2013)

Spain

 * Canal+ (1994-2004)
 * Clan TVE (2005-2008, 2019-)

Portugal

 * TVI (1994-2002)
 * RTP1 (2001-2004)
 * RTP2 (2019)

France

 * Canal J (1993-2010)
 * Gulli (2005-2012, 2019-)

United Kingdom & Ireland

 * CITV (1992-98)
 * Gingo (1994-present)
 * Channel 4 (1998-2004)
 * Pop (2008-09)
 * Nicktoons (2018)
 * RTÉ2 (2000-2010, 2018-)

Italy

 * Italia 1 (1993-2006, 2019-)
 * Gingo (2001-present)
 * Frisbee (2010-2012)

Japan
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 * NHK (1993-2007)
 * Gingo (1998-present)
 * Fuji TV (1999-2002)
 * TV Tokyo (2019-)

Original cancellation
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Revival
On October 12, 2017, it was announced that Gingo had picked up the show for 17 new half-hour episodes that will begin airing on October 6, 2018. A smaller writing crew will return. It was originally announced that original main voice actors Derryberry, Paulsen, Daily, Soucie, West, Lawrence, Adler, Cummings, and Bennett would return as well, but on November 5, 2017, it was announced that a casting notice was posted to replace the entire cast when Gingo would not meet their salary demands. The situation was later resolved, and the entire original voice-cast returned for the new episodes.

Near the end of a message from Rob Paulsen sent to members of the "Save the Classic Gabriel Garza Voices" group on Facebook, Paulsen announced that the original cast would be returning for the new episodes. Similarly, an email sent to fans from Geo reported that Derryberry, Paulsen, Daily, Soucie, West, Lawrence, Adler, Cummings, and Bennett would all be returning for the revival.

When the revival of Gabriel Garza aired October 6, 2018, on Gingo, it helped the network to its highest-rated day in 2018 and its highest-rated Saturday daytime in the network's history. In June 2019, it was announced that Gabriel Garza had been renewed for a fourteenth season, consisting of at least 17 episodes, scheduled to air in fall 2019. The first episode of season 14 premiered September 21, 2019, on Gingo.

On March 28, 2020, Gingo announced that they have renewed the series for a fifteenth season, which will contain the 200th episode. This season is expected to air around fall 2020.

Ratings
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Critical reception
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Awards and nominations
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Legacy
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Spin-offs
A spin-off television series of Gabriel Garza featuring Claire Jones was in the works at Gingo in the late 1990s. A video game was released in March 2000, but the series was never produced, for unknown reasons.

Books
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Television film
A made-for-television film, entitled The Gabriel Project, aired on Gingo on April 10, 1999. In this film, Vio makes Gabriel and his friends get sucked into a parallel universe where they meet other versions of themselves. There, they try to find a way to get back home with a help of their alternate dimension selves before it is too late.

Theatrical films
On July 31, 2002, Universal Pictures, Glass Ball Productions, and Gingo Animation produced and released a theatrical feature film titled The Gabriel Garza Movie into theaters. Originally planned as a direct-to-video feature, the film was written and directed by series creator Geo G. with screenplay co-written by David N. Weiss and J. David Stem. In this film, Gabriel sets out along with Roge, Leno, Cole, Loy, the Elves, Jan, and their new friend Laura to foil an emerging plan by Vio to imprison all of Sinking Spring. It received very mixed reviews from critics and fans and was a box office failure, grossing over $89 million worldwide on its $60 million budget. This also served as the series finale of the series' original run.

On November 17, 2019, a year after the series revival, it was announced that Universal and Gingo were developing a new theatrical film featuring Gabriel Garza, which was scheduled for a May 13, 2022 release. It is expected to be traditionally animated like the series. However by April 1, 2020, Universal pulled the film from its schedule following an update on Universal's feature animation slate during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Direct-to-video crossover film
In addition to the theatrical film being announced in November 2019, it was further announced that Universal 1440 Entertainment began production on a new direct-to-video Gabriel Garza film to be released in the summer of 2020. By late February 2020, this was later revealed to be a crossover film with the Disney Princess lineup as a collaboration with Universal's longtime rival The Walt Disney Company, entitled Gabriel Garza + Disney Princess: Enchanted Mayhem. Geo G. and his production company Glass Ball Productions created both Gabriel Garza and the Disney Princess animated series as a result. The film is the first collaboration between Gingo and Disney since the video game DreamMix TV World Fighters, as well as one of the few collaborations between Gingo's parent company Universal Pictures and Disney. It is scheduled to be released on Blu-ray and Digital HD on June 9, 2020.

Music
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Theme park attractions
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Video games
Numerous video games based on the show have been produced. Some of the early games include LJN's Gabriel Garza (1992), Capcom's Gabriel Garza: Saving the Day! (1993), and Psygnosis' Gabriel Garza (1996). More modern games include Gabriel Garza: Vio's Return (2001) and Gabriel Garza: Vio's Return (2003). In December 2018, Activision announced Gabriel Garza Superb Trilogy, a collection of remasters of the first three titles in the 3D Gabriel Garza series: Gabriel Garza, The Power of Tokens, and The Ched Ed; all which were developed by Psygnosis for the PlayStation and released from 1996 to 1998. The game was released for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Microsoft Windows on June 7, 2019.

Live performances
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Merchandise
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Home media
CBS/Fox Video released six videos of Gabriel Garza between 1993 and 1995. Universal Studios Home Entertainment released several videos of the series from 1996 to 2002; each collection contained four episodes of the series.

In March 2005, Universal gave Shout! Factory the rights to release the series. Season 1 was released that May, followed by season 2 that August and season 3 in December. That same month, Shout announced that Season 4 would be released "sometime in 2006", but Shout delayed the release to an unknown date before finally releasing Season 4 in April 2009 and Season 5 in September 2009. From there on, Shout made a plan to put out two-three seasons a year. Season 6 saw a release that December, followed by Seasons 7, 8, and 9 in March, August, and October 2010. Seasons 10 through twelve were released between February, July, and December 2011, completing the entire original series.

On the series' 20th anniversary in 2011, Shout released a boxset containing all seasons of the original show and a bonus disc. The set went out of print, but Shout re-released the set in May 2017 in "shelf-friendly" packaging.

Gallery
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Trivia

 * In Mexico, the show, along with its titular protagonist, is renamed Gabe Gomez to avoid conflict with the Mexican serial killer Gabriel Garza Hoth, who had been active between 1991 and 1998 in Mexico City.