It’s very rare to see a film that was once cancelled brought back to life, with one of the most recently notable cancellations being a CGI version of Popeye the Sailor Man from Hotel Trannsylvania director Genndy Tartakovsky. Fortunately, Genndy Tartakovsky’s Popeye movie is now back in production through King Features.
Originally announced in 2012, Popeye was going to be produced by Sony Pictures Animation and considering the talent involved, many felt this had potential to be a great revival of the character. In 2014, test footage of the film was released to the public and received praise for its extremely cartoonish style and fluid action. However in 2015, Genndy announced that he was moving off the project due to creative differences, stating that, “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.”
Enter King Features, who have now teamed up with Tartakovsky to revive the once cancelled project. King Features is a small animation company best known for creating projects based around classic cartoons. This includes a YouTube-based project based on the spinach eating sailor known as Popeye’s Island Adventures and an upcoming Netflix series based on the hit video game Cuphead. While not much else has been revealed about the project outside of who is attached, this news is very assuring for those who were disappointed in Popeye being shelved. Here’s hoping that it film will still be as stylistically cartoony as that test footage was years ago.
No release date has been set for Popeye.
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