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Samurai Jack creator and director of Hotel Transylvania, Genndy Tartakovsky, has been developing a CGI animated version of Popeye for a few years now for Sony Animation. He's finally revealed a little taste of what he is planning for the movie in an animation test that was released today. It's just a little something to show us what they are looking at doing, and the director made sure to point out, “it’s not a clip, it’s not a trailer, it’s nothing from the actual movie, the voices are all temp.”
The video also features some concept art from the film, and the director talks about why he's making the project:
"From a young child, I was really destined to make one movie, and that movie was Popeye. Even so much, that when I first started animation, my very first teacher was a 90-year-old Popeye animator from the Fleischer studios, Gordon Sheehan. So I feel like it’s destiny that’s brought me here to Sony Pictures Animation to make Popeye an animated feature."
He also gives some insight on the challenges of adapting this 1929 character for a modern day audience saying:
"Popeye more than anything else really embodies the physical humor, and the whole reason I do animation is to laugh at movement… We’ve been working on Popeye for a little while now and we wanted to really explore how Popeye would translate from the old ’30s cartoons and ’40s cartoons to today. To contemporize him without losing the heart and sincerity of what Popeye really is, and what he meant to me as a kid and as an adult.
Tartakovsky obviously has a very personal connection with the character. He's a great storyteller, and I think he'll be able to pull it off and make a film audiences will love. The project still has yet to get a green light from the studio, and he's hoping that by releasing this video it will spark some eagerness in the executives so that they will push it through. After seeing what they are doing here, I don't see why they wouldn't.
The script is still being written for the movie, but it will be an origin type story that will include all of the classic Popeye characters such as Olive Oyl, Bluto, the Sea Hag, Wimpy, Popeye’s dad, and even Eugene the Jeep.
