Hey Arnold!

Hey Arnold!
File:HeyArnold promotional poster.jpg The main characters of the show. From left to right: Helga, Arnold and Gerald
Genre	Comedy-drama
Created by	Craig Bartlett
Developed by	Craig Bartlett Joe Ansolabehere Steve Viksten
Starring	Toran Caudell Phillip Van Dyke Spencer Klein Jamil W. Smith Francesca Marie Smith Justin Shenkarow Christopher P. Walberg Christopher Castile Ben Diskin Sam Gifaldi Anndi McAfee Olivia Hack Dan Castellaneta Tress MacNeille Craig Bartlett Maurice LaMarche
Music by	Jim Lang
Country of origin	United States
No. of seasons	5
No. of episodes	100 (list of episodes)
Production
Running time	approx. 22-26 minutes
Production companies	Snee-Oosh, Inc. Nickelodeon Productions
Original release
Network	Nickelodeon
Release	October 7, 1996 (1996-10-07) – June 8, 2004 (2004-06-08)

Hey Arnold! is an American animated television series created by Craig Bartlett for Nickelodeon. The series aired from October 7, 1996 until June 8, 2004. The show features a fourth grader named Arnold and his friends, and the predicaments they encounter.

Plot

The show stars fourth grader Arnold, a boy who lives with his paternal grandparents, Phil and Gertrude, proprietors of the Sunset Arms boarding house. In each episode, Arnold often helps a schoolmate solve a personal problem, or encounters a predicament of his own. The show also focuses on Arnold's classmate, Helga, who often treats Arnold cruelly and bullies him constantly. However, a recurring theme of the show is the fact that Helga pretends to dislike Arnold to hide the fact that she is secretly in love with him.

Many episodes involve urban legends, often told by Arnold's best friend, Gerald. These episodes often feature over-the-top events such as those that involve superheroes or headless horsemen, among others.

Setting

Hey Arnold! takes place in the fictional American city of Hillwood. Craig Bartlett stated in an interview that the city on the show is based on large northern cities, including Seattle (his hometown), Portland, Oregon (where he went to art school) and New York City (from which many landmarks were borrowed), also with references to Nashville, TN Grand Ole Opry. Bartlett, having grown up in Seattle, bases many of the show's events on his own experience growing up in the city. The Pig War mentioned in the episode with the same title took place on the boundary between what is now the State of Washington and British Columbia.

Production

Hey Arnold! was created by Craig Bartlett and is based on his comics starring Arnold, which he created in 1986. The familiar, cel-animated Arnold came about in the mid-1990s when Nickelodeon picked up the new series. Apart from the animation style, Nick's Arnold now wears a sweater, with his plaid shirt untucked (resembling a kilt). Only Arnold's cap remains from his original clay-animation wardrobe. Arnold comic strips also appeared in Simpsons Illustrated magazine. (Matt Groening, the creator of The Simpsons, is Craig Bartlett's brother-in-law.) Hey Arnold! was pitched to Nickelodeon in the fall of 1993, a pilot was produced in the spring of 1994, and the series was greenlit in January 1995. Hey Arnold! was in production continuously from 1995 to 2001, culminating in a TV movie originally titled "Arnold Saves the Neighborhood", which ended up being released theatrically as Hey Arnold!: The Movie in June 2002. Production of Hey Arnold! wrapped in May 2001.

Hey Arnold! debuted as an animated short for the Nickelodeon film Harriet the Spy in 1996.

The show also aired on "Nick on CBS" from 2002 up until September 2004.

The show was also aired on The N from April 2002 until June 2006.

A film was planned in which Arnold searches for his lost parents, but it was abandoned after Craig Bartlett left Hey Arnold! for a new project.

Characters

Main article: List of Hey Arnold! characters

Main voice cast

Character	Voice actor(s)
Arnold	Toran Caudell, Phillip Van Dyke, Spencer Klein, Alex D. Linz
Helga Pataki	Francesca Smith
Gerald Johanssen	Jamil Walker Smith
Grandpa Phil	Dan Castellaneta
Grandma Gertie	Tress MacNeille

Episodes

Main article: List of Hey Arnold! episodes

Feature film

Main article: Hey Arnold!: The Movie

In this 2002 theatrical feature film, Arnold, Helga and Gerald set out on their 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 features the voice talents of Jennifer Jason Leigh, Paul Sorvino, and Christopher Lloyd.

DVD and digital releases

Amazon.com released the first two seasons on DVD through its CreateSpace program in August 2008. The remaining seasons were released in later months. The DVDs are sold as "burn on demand" items. Some episodes have also been released on iTunes as well as Netflix. Amazon.com has officially, with the announcement of Shout Factory producing their own DVDs, ceased to sell the CreateSpace DVDs.

Create Space Hey Arnold Releases	Release date	Discs	Episodes
Season 1 (1996–97)	August 21, 2008	4	20
Season 2 (1997–98)	August 21, 2008	4	19
Season 3 (1998–99)	December 7, 2009	6	27
Season 4 (1999–2000)	November 27, 2009	4	19
Season 5 (2001–2004)	December 4, 2009	4	15

Shout Factory! Hey Arnold Releases	Release date	Discs	Episodes
Season 1	August 9, 2011	4	20
Season 2	TBA	4	19
Season 3	TBA	4	27
Season 4	TBA	4	19
Season 5	TBA	4	15

External links

• Hey Arnold! at IMDb
• Template:Tv.com
• Hey Arnold! at The Big Cartoon DataBase
• Hey Arnold!