Hey Arnold! is an American animated sitcom created by Craig Bartlett for Nickelodeon. The series originally aired from October 7, 1996, to June 8, 2004. The film premiered on November 24, 2017, on Nickelodeon.
Premise
Setting
Hey Arnold! takes place in the fictional American city of Hillwood. Creator Craig Bartlett described the city as "an amalgam of large northern cities I have loved, including Seattle (my hometown), Portland (where I went to art school) and Brooklyn (the bridge, the brownstones, the subway)"; the city also contains inspirations from Chicago, such as a baseball field called Quigley Field (a reference to the real-life Wrigley Field). Evan Levine of the Houston Chronicle commented on the series's "backdrop of dark streets, nighttime adventures and rundown buildings, all seen from a child's point of view."
At the end of the episode "Road Trip", when Helga and Miriam are returning home after having car troubles en route to South Dakota, they pass a sign marking the Washington State border, implying that Hillwood is in Washington. The Pig War, as re-enacted in the episode of the same title, took place on the boundary between what is now British Columbia and the state of Washington. A bridge that leads to downtown Hillwood resembles Portland's Burnside Bridge, while Gerald's house was modeled after the Victorian houses seen in Nob Hill, Portland. During high school and college, he studied painting and sculpture at the Museum Art School in Portland. Originally, Bartlett intended to become a painter "in the 19th-century sense", but he became interested in animation during a trip to Italy. His first post-graduation job was at Will Vinton Productions, a claymation studio in Portland. The Arnold Waltz (1990), and Arnold Rides a Chair (1991), the latter aired as a filler short on Sesame Street in 1991. The same year, Arnold comic strips also appeared in Simpsons Illustrated magazine by Bartlett's brother-in-law Matt Groening, the creator of The Simpsons.
thumb|Arnold Escapes From Church (1988), the first claymation short to feature Arnold
Bartlett later joined the staff for Rugrats, where he served as story editor for three years. In 1993, he teamed up with five writers from Rugrats to develop animated projects for Nickelodeon. A dispute over a second then-planned Hey Arnold! movie, The Jungle Movie, resulted in Bartlett leaving Nickelodeon. The last season's episodes were released over four years, beginning on March 4, 2000. The series aired its final episode, unannounced, on June 8, 2004.
Critical reception
In an article for Vox, Caroline Framke praised Hey Arnolds depiction of adolescence and urban life, stating: "Hey Arnold wove urban legends into its empathetic narrative of how hard it can be to grow up — and how rewarding the process can be when you have some friends and a whole lot of imagination." Rafael Motamayor of /Film echoed that sentiment, writing "Rather than show it as a scary place where every cop show in America is set, Arnold and his friends demonstrated that the city is also a place with endless possibilities, myths, and characters. Not that the show encouraged anything bad; the kids always knew where to go and where not to go. But it showed the reality of millions of kids who grew up in urban areas, and challenged the idea of the perfect American life". Bustles Marie Grace Goris suggested the series as the "best Nickelodeon cartoon of all time" and gave sixteen reasons why, such as its diverse characters and its ability to "emotionally stir" viewers.
Attempted spinoff
The Patakis was an attempted spinoff of Hey Arnold! that would focus on Helga Pataki as a teenager and would deal with dark topics and themes, including Helga having a habit of writing letters to Arnold (who would date her before moving away) that she would never send to him, her older sister Olga Pataki falling from grace after quitting her teaching job to become a failing actress, and her mother Miriam Pataki being an alcoholic who sought help in dealing with her addiction. The character of Helga's father, Robert "Big Bob" Pataki, would be modeled in the spinoff based on Tony Soprano from the HBO crime drama series The Sopranos. Nickelodeon rejected the spinoff due to its content being deemed "too dark for their network." It was then shopped to Nickelodeon's sister network MTV, which also rejected the show due to its similarities to the network's own animated series Daria. Since then, the spinoff was never materialized.
Home media
Nickelodeon released all five seasons on DVD in Region 1 via Amazon.com through its CreateSpace Manufacture-on-demand program in 2008 and 2009. Season 1 was released on August 21, 2008, Season 2 on August 29, 2008, Season 3 on December 8, 2009, Season 4 on November 27, 2009, and Season 5 on December 4, 2009.
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! CreateSpace Releases
!style="text-align:center;"| Release Date
! Discs
! Episodes
|-
|Season 1 ||August 21, 2008 || style="text-align:center;"|4|| style="text-align:center;"|20
|-
|Season 2 ||August 29, 2008 || style="text-align:center;"|4|| style="text-align:center;"|19
|-
|Season 3: Volume 1 & Volume 2 ||December 8, 2009 || style="text-align:center;"|6|| style="text-align:center;"|20
|-
|Season 4 ||November 27, 2009 || style="text-align:center;"|4|| style="text-align:center;"|17
|-
|Season 5 ||December 4, 2009 || style="text-align:center;"|4|| style="text-align:center;"|24
|}
On May 9, 2011, it was announced that Shout! Factory had acquired the rights to the series. They subsequently released Season 1 in a 4-disc set on August 9, 2011. Season 2, Part 1 was released in a 2-disc set on March 20, 2012, followed by Season 2, Part 2 in a 2-disc set on July 24, 2012. Season 3 was released in a 3-disc set on January 29, 2013, as a "Shout Select" title. On May 14, 2013, Season 4 was released in a 2-disc set as a Shout exclusive followed by Season 5 released in a 3-disc set on October 15, 2013, also as a Shout exclusive making the entire series available on DVD. On August 19, 2014, the complete series was released in a 16-disc set through Shout! Factory as a Walmart exclusive. On November 20, 2018, Paramount Home Entertainment released Hey Arnold!: The Ultimate Collection DVD containing all of the previously released episodes and movies now packaged into one set.
In Australia, all five seasons have been released by Beyond Home Entertainment under license from Nickelodeon. A 16-disc collector's edition was released on September 1, 2016, containing all five seasons.
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! rowspan="2" | DVD Name
! rowspan="2" | Episodes
! rowspan="2" | # of Discs
! colspan="2" | Release Date
|-
! Region 1
! Region 4
|-
|Season 1 || style="text-align:center;"|20 || style="text-align:center;"|4 || || April 3, 2013
|-
|Season 2, Part 1<br />Season 2, Part 2 || style="text-align:center;"|19|| style="text-align:center;"|4|| <br /> || April 3, 2013 <small>(complete)</small>
|-
|Season 3♦ || style="text-align:center;"|20 || style="text-align:center;"|3 || || June 3, 2015
|-
|Season 4♦ || style="text-align:center;"|17 || style="text-align:center;"|2 || || June 3, 2015
|-
|Season 5♦ || style="text-align:center;"|24 || style="text-align:center;"|3 || || September 1, 2015
|-
|The Complete Series || style="text-align:center;"|100 || style="text-align:center;"|16 || || September 1, 2016
|-
|The Ultimate Collection || style="text-align:center;"|100, 2 Movies || style="text-align:center;"|18|| ||
|}
♦ – Shout! Factory select title sold exclusively through Shout's online store.
Films
2002 feature film
In this 2002 feature film, Arnold, Helga and Gerald set out on a quest to save their old neighborhood from a greedy developer who plans on converting it into a huge shopping mall. This film was directed by Tuck Tucker, and featured guest voice talents of Jennifer Jason Leigh, Paul Sorvino and Christopher Lloyd.
In 1998, Nickelodeon gave Craig Bartlett the chance to develop a feature adaptation of the series. As work on the fifth season was completing, Bartlett and company engaged in the production of Arnold Saves the Neighborhood, which would eventually become Hey Arnold!: The Movie. but executives at Paramount Pictures decided to release it theatrically after successful test screenings. In September 2015, Nickelodeon president Russell Hicks announced that the company was considering revivals for a number of their older shows, including Hey Arnold!. According to an announcement by The Independent, a Hey Arnold! revival is "very much on the cards". On November 23, 2015, Nickelodeon announced that a TV movie is in the works and will pick up right where the series left off. The film will also answer unanswered questions about the fate of Arnold's parents. In June 2016, it was confirmed that the TV film would be titled The Jungle Movie, and that 19 of the original voice actors from the series would lend their voices in the film. New cast-members included Mason Vale Cotton as Arnold; Benjamin "Lil' P-Nut" Flores as Gerald; Gavin Lewis as Eugene; Jet Jurgensmeyer as Stinky; Aiden Lewandowski as Sid; Laya Hayes as Nadine; Nicolas Cantu as Curly; Wally Wingert as Oskar; Stephen Stanton as Pigeon Man; and Alfred Molina as the villain Lasombra. The film debuted on November 24, 2017, on Nickelodeon.
Future
Before the premiere of The Jungle Movie, Nickelodeon stated that if the ratings of the film would succeed they would consider rebooting the series. Though the ratings were a success with millennials, it ended up missing the mark with Generation Z, so the idea of bringing back the show on Nickelodeon was scrapped. However, in August 2018, musical composer for the show Jim Lang revealed in a Tunes/Toons podcast that while Nick will not produce the show at the studio due to the poor ratings of The Jungle Movie, he said that: "Netflix, Amazon, Apple were all people that they were going to go out to with the idea of trying to make a season six of Hey Arnold!. We haven't heard anything yet, but we've got our fingers crossed." In October 2019, Craig Bartlett revealed in an interview with The Arun Mehta Show that Hey Arnold! could come back as a series with the characters aged up for season 6 if the Rugrats reboot is successful.
Soundtrack
Hey Arnold! The Music, Volume 1 was released on July 3, 2020 as a vinyl record, marking the first-ever official release of the show's music. The soundtrack included 45 minutes of previously unreleased music that had been remastered from the original audio files by Emmy Award-winning sound engineer Dave Marino in conjunction with show composer Jim Lang, as well as new original exclusive artwork done by Bartlett.