Wearing your pants outside of (or instead of) your trousers is about to experience the biggest revival since Superman flew onto our screen back in the 70s.
Dreamworks Animation, the team behind Kung-Fu Panda and Shrek, have just picked up the rights to Dav Pilkey’s cheeky Captain Underpants comic adventure series.
Pilkey has always resisted selling the rights to his comic kids books about the y-fronted hero, since they began publication in 1997. A recent change of heart however led to a “spirited auction” in which Dreamworks came up trumps.
Did that “change of heart” have anything to do with a boat in the Med, Pilkey?
Dreamworks Animation’s chief creative officer Bill Damaschke has been chasing the rights for years, and is delighted to have finally secured them. “We’re all big fans,” he says. “There’s a great combination of kid and adult humor, and George and Harold are these terrific mischievous characters.”
The books revolve around primary school kids Harold and George, whose hobby is writing and drawing the adventures of their invented superman. Their headmaster Benny Krupp hates children, and runs a fascist regime at the boys’ elementary school, where imagination is forbidden.
Crime on crime for the Dreamworks crew, surely?
Yet the boys hypnotise Krupp into becoming the heroic Captain Underpants whenever anyone snaps their fingers (he changes back when water is poured on his head, obviously).
Expect cameo appearances from Professor Poopypants, Wedgie Woman, and the Inedible Hunk. Unsurprisingly, no celebrity voice talents have been confirmed yet.
