Between 2012 and 2015, animator Genndy Tartakovsky worked on a planned animated Popeye movie for Sony Pictures – however, he departed the project citing creative differences in the vision for the property. Now, Tartakovsky will return to the project to start from scratch alongside King Features, Popeye’s comic strip publishers and owners, according to Animation Magazine.
No details of the updated film have been revealed, but Tartakovsky previously filled Newsarama in on his plans for the now canceled Sony film.
“I just wanted him to be Popeye. It’s a very deep, dark, and long story, but it was obvious they didn’t want it and it was obvious they didn’t have a lot of respect for me and I was handling their number one franchise,” Tartakovsky explained in 2017. “It wasn’t going to work because they didn’t really believe in it. It was a tough loss for me.”
“We had a proof of concept, we had an amazing story reel all done that everybody loved. The whole studio was excited and the marketing was gearing up, but then the hack happened,” Tartakovsky continued, referencing the 2014 leak of numerous emails among Sony Pictures executives that revealed many then secret film plans, some of which were subsequently altered. “The executives were dealing with so much and all this ugliness came out it was just the wrong place and wrong time. I don’t even know if they wanted the real Popeye because that’s what we wanted to do. We didn’t want to reimagine him with sunglasses and a backwards hat.”
No projected release date for Tartakovsky and King Features’ Popeye was announced.