Dreamworks Animation wins film rights to 'Captain Underpants'

[Sawyer]

From Deadline:

DreamWorks Animation Wins Aucton For ‘Captain Underpants’ Feature Film Rights
By MIKE FLEMING

EXCLUSIVE: After a spirited auction, DreamWorks Animation has acquired rights to make a feature out of Captain Underpants, the popular 8-volume book series by Dav Pilkey. DreamWorks Animation wasn’t the only bidder, but won the title this morning.

The books revolve around a couple of precocious fourth graders named George Beard and Harold Hutchins. Looking to get back at nasty, student-hating principal Mr. Benny Krupp, the boys hypnotize the principal and cause him to become Captain Underpants. He’s a superhero who is nice and helpful to children and manages to get into all kinds of misadventures with the fourth graders shadowing him to make sure he doesn’t get hurt. The principal has no recollection of his heroics when he returns to normal. Pikey has completed eight volumes with a ninth in the works, Captain Underpants and the Terrifying Return of Tippy Tinkletrousers. Scholastic publishes the books.

DWA chief creative officer Bill Damaschke said he and his colleagues have chased Pilkey for movie rights since he first began publishing the series in 1997, but the author never wanted to sell them. “I know he’d been approached many times, and finally, Kassie Evashevski at UTA and Amy Berkower at Writers House phoned us and simply said, ‘He’s ready,’” Damaschke said. “There’s a great anarchic combination of kid and adult humor, and George and Harold are these terrific mischievous characters. And we felt that hypnotizing the principal is one of those great ideas. We’re all big fans of the book.”

UTA repped Pilkey and the lit agency in making the deal.

I'm honestly surprised that it's taken this long.

 

[ThePowerCosmic]

I used to love these books as a kid, good to hear.

 

[Ultra Lantern]

This looks interesting.I'll see this movie when it comes out.

 

[Asteroid-Man]

OH YES!!!!!!!! SOOO GOOD!!!

 

[Silvermoth]

Hey, I remember this from when I was a kid! Oh well, good on 'em. I'm sure kids'll love it.

 

[Doctor Jones]

Finally! Loved these books as a kid. It's weird, this topic came up amongst my friends a couple weeks ago about how we all loved it. Animation is the best way to go.

 

[the amazing fro]

I used to love these books so this is awesome!

 

[Sentinel X]

Oh my god...why am I extremely excited for this even though I read these books way back when I was a little kid? I can't wait!

 

[redhawk23]

It is actually fairly sad how excited about this I am. I wonder which way they would with this in actually telling a story? Theres not really a need to turn each book into a movie of its own, nor do I think they should try. This could honestly be nuts. I just hope they retain a lot of the site gags and such, odd little "conform today!" poster in the background. Letter rearrangements are indeed a must.

 

[TDK Joker]

I loved these books when I was younger. I actually found a few of them a couple of months back and I actually really wanted to start reading them again.
Dreamworks I imagine are quite a good partnership for this.
They could easily fit in the "To make a long story short...it did" jokes into the film as well, by just having George or Harold, or someone else, telling a story and then finishing with that.

 

[Marvel Spider]

Haha, awesome! I loved these books when I was a a kid.

Good thing they chose animation. Live-action for this would be greatly, greatly disturbing.

 

[Cuyan]

If they handle these as well as they did the Kung-Fu Panda series, and How To Train Your Dragon, I am on board.

 

[Raiden]

Having been forced to watch endless hours of Wow! Wow! Wobbzy with my kids, I thought Dreamworks acquired the rights to make the movie based on 'Captain Wonderpants', which is a superhero that Wobbzy idolized on his show.

 

[Duke]

I'm very interested to see how they'll handle this. I'm hopeful it'll be as successful as their other properties.

 

[PSYLENTGuardian]

Color me interested. I loved Captain Underpants as a kid.

 

[Lord]

Any news of this project?
I remember reading all the books when i was younger, if they can make this as good as how to train your dragon and kung fu panda then i can't wait

 

[Blitzkrieg Bop]

The actions scenes have to be reminiscent of the flip-style.

 

[Wolfwood]

I think this will be guaranteed to make them a mint.

 

[Lord]

I hope they do the same they did with other adaptations and change the story as they like to make it more interesting, not that the original story is bad, quite the contrary, but if they can make it better then why shouldn't they do it?

 

[Sawyer]

Since Dreamworks Animation is doing a panel at SDCC, I wonder if we might get word of the progress on this thing. Concept art would be awesome.

 

[Hush]

I'm excited for the prospect of this movie.

 

[Blitzkrieg Bop]

Still got 'em.

 

[Lord]

I got up to volume 8. Pilkey really took a long time between that one and the 9th book, even when volume 8 took 3 years i thought it was too long. I wonder how they'll adapt this, volume 1 doesn't have enough content to fill an entire movie, and there are certainly way too manky books to make it a film series

 

[MrMaooz]

Is this still happening? I loved these books when I was younger!

 

[Sawyer]

Rob Letterman Directing, Nicholas Stoller Writing