According to Animation Magazine, Emmy winner Genndy Tartakovsky (Hotel Transylvania trilogy, Star Wars: Clone Wars, Samurai Jack) is teaming up with King Features to develop his long-awaited Popeye animated movie.
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The Popeye feature was first announced in 2012, set at Sony Pictures Animation, but in 2015 it was revealed Tartakovsky was no longer directing the project. At the time, Tartakovsky said, “I was in love with what we were doing, but I think the studio is going through changes and I don’t know if they want to make the Popeye that I want to make.”
While Tartakovsky still teamed up with Sony Pictures Animation on other projects such as the Hotel Transylvania trilogy and a couple of original animated features in 2018, King Features has been developing fresh animated updates of some of its classic comic brands, such as the new 2D Popeye cartoons Popeye’s Island Adventures that was launched on YouTube in 2018. Last year the company also announced they would be developing an animated series based on the retro toon-inspired game Cuphead.
King Features holds the cinematic rights to Popeye and will help Tartakovsky go back to the drawing board on his beloved project that has been years in the making.
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Created by E.C. Segar, Popeye first appeared in the already established “Thimble Theater” comic strip in 1929. Introduced as a walk-on character, Popeye eventually became the strip’s star. In 1933, The Fleischers began to produce animated Popeye cartoons which lasted through the 1940s. The sailor man also came to the big screen in 1980 with Robert Altman directing and the late Robin Williams in the lead.
