Charlie Brown, the beloved comic-book character, will be coming to the bigscreen in a 3D animated version in 2015, 20th Century Fox announced at the CinemaCon movie convention in Las Vegas on Thursday.
The rights to the iconic comic book character have long been unavailable. Charles Schulz, who died in 2000, had always been reluctant to grant movie rights to his characters, and his family has zealously guarded his copyright.
"This will forever change the face of animation," Fox Chairman Jim Gianopulos quipped to the crowd of a few thousand exhibitors, as he unveiled a huge 3D image of Charlie Brown's familiar face -- the first image of the film that's being created by Blue Sky Studios, Fox's animation partner. "Prepare to have your minds blown." (dnw to have my mind blown by shitty animation kthxbye)
For more than four decades Charlie Brown and his friends in the Peanuts cartoon were among the most popular and beloved comic strips in American daily newspapers.
Steve Martino ("Ice Age: Continental Drift") will direct, according to a studio spokesman, who also said it was a two-year process to convince the Schulz family to give Fox and Blue Sky the rights.
Well Charlie Brown is actually not a comic book character, but whatever. This sounds lame no matter how you slice it, but I won't judge it until it actually comes out.
I'm okay with that. Actually a stop-motion Peanuts would be awesome, CG could be cool as I really like CG, but this feels like too much of chasing after a trend rather than deciding it is the best medium to tell the story.
I do own a few Peanuts comic books, which featured Charlie Brown.
They're part of your Four Color collection, right?
That is correct.
Dell gave Peanuts its own ongoing book. This began with issue #878 (Feb. 1958) of Dell’s Four Color Comics. This all-Peanuts issue boasts a gorgeous signed Schulz cover and contains three one-page stories (inside front cover, inside back cover, and back cover) and four eight-page stories, all by Sasseville. This exact format was retained for the second all-Peanuts issue, Four Color Comics #969 (Feb. 1959) -- work by Sasseville and Hale -- and with the third, Four Color Comics #1015 (Aug.-Oct. 1959).
Dell then spun the series out of Four Color, and it went on for nine more issues.
They were still going strong in the 1970s. We had a variety pack with reels featuring several different sets of characters, including Peanuts and Woody Woodpecker. They were kind of mind-blowing to look at, especially when you were a child.
_________________ The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking fine pearls who, when he found an especially costly one, sold everything he had to buy it.
If his family 'has zealouly guarded his copyright' to Peanuts, what made them give the rights to Fox? $$$? Nice way to honor your father.
Now that so many creations that were beloved parts of so many peoples' childhoods are now hugely lucrative multimedia properties, it must be very hard for heirs to resist the temptation to set themselves up for life by cashing in. In fairness to the heirs, their father was never shy about licensing his creations. The concern here is that without Schulz's creative control the Peanuts characters will now mutate into something hard to recognize, the way a lot of the properties that Disney owns have done. Fortunately it looks like they have only sold Fox the movie rights. They haven't sold the whole thing outright. This may be why they went with Fox--it would have been like Disney to insist on owning Charlie Brown lock, stock, and barrel.
I really don't think a 3-D movie sounds like an appropriate medium for depicting the characters, their View-Master history notwithstanding. Part of what made the old Peanuts cartoons so charming was their 2-D art. They usually looked as if Charles Schulz had somehow animated them himself. A 3-D animation Peanuts is going to look like a very different animal. I suspect it's probably also going to have wild chase scenes and stuff like a typical contemporary feature made for today's 3-second-attention-span children. Which might just be what it takes to have a hope of succeeding nowadays--but it sure won't look or feel much like anything Charles Schulz created.
_________________ The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking fine pearls who, when he found an especially costly one, sold everything he had to buy it.
Well, it was done successfully as the play "You're a Good Man Charlie Brown." But Schulz was closely involved with that.
_________________ The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking fine pearls who, when he found an especially costly one, sold everything he had to buy it.
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