King Features has teamed up with Chernin Entertainment to bring Popeye the Sailor back to cinemas with a new live-action movie now in development. The new “big budget feature” has attached screenwriter Michael Caleo (Sexy Beast, The Sopranos).
The news follows the fan-lamented demise of Genndy Tartakovsky’s animated movie project at Sony Pictures Animation, which was sunk in 2022. The 95-year-old character created by E.C. Segar last graced the big screen in 1980’s Popeye, starring Robin Williams and Shelley Duvall.
Popeye was first introduced in Segar’s Thimble Theatre comic strip in 1929. A couple years later, King Features teamed up with Fleischer Studios to create theatrical cartoons inspired by the comics’ array of characters; the spinach-loving brawler made his screen debut in 1933’s Popeye the Sailor, a Betty Boop cartoon, and began his dedicated series with I Yam What I Yam later that year. Popeye cartoons were a regular feature of Paramount’s slate for nearly 25 years — in the late 1930s, he was polled as Hollywood’s most popular cartoon character.
The chap continued to delight fans throughout the 20th century, starring in his own television cartoon series, which carried over voice stars Jack Mercer (Popeye), Mae Questel (Olive Oyl) and Jackson Beck (Bluto/Brutus). The 1960 series comprised 220 cartoons, and led into the television movie Popeye Meets the Man Who Hated Laughter (1972) as well as additional shows and specials through to Cartoon Network’s anthology series The Popeye Show (2001) and the 75th anniversary special, Popeye’s Voyage: The Quest for Pappy, produced by Lionsgate in 2004 and starring Futurama‘s Billy West.
Sony Pictures Animation’s CG Popeye feature was first announced in development in 2010, with Genndy Tartakovsky (Hotel Transylvania franchise, Samurai Jack, Primal) attached to direct in 2012. However, the slated 2014 release date was pushed back multiple times, and Tartakovsky announced his departure from the project in 2015 to work on an original project (also canceled). Fans were given a glimmer of hope in 2016 when a new writer, T.J. Fixman, was signed, and things looked even brighter when King Features had re-teamed with Tartakovsky to continue development in 2020. But, the celebrated animation directed declared Popeye was dead in the water in 2022.
[Source: Variety]
