Popular book series getting big screen adaptation.
DreamWorks Animation has snapped up the rights to develop a big screen feature of Dav Pilkey’s 8-volume book series ‘Captain Underpants,’ reports Deadline.
The popular series began in 1997 and revolves 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 is currently working away on a ninth book, ‘Captain Underpants and the Terrifying Return of Tippy Tinkletrousers.’ Bill Damaschke, chief creative officer over at DreamWorks Animation, said he and his colleagues are great fans of the series and that the studio had been chasing Pilkey for movie rights since the series was first published.