You may recall that Fox debuted a traditional teaser trailer for its Charlie Brown ‘toon recently. Sony is going one step further releasing a mini-featurette on the new Popeye film that includes an animation test...
Narrated by and partly featuring director Genndy Tartakovsky, who made Hotel Transylvania for the studio, the piece explores his lifelong obsession with the spinach-loving Sailor Man and his various adventures. Here, he talks a little bit about the challenges of bringing a character that has largely existed in 1930s and ‘40s cartoons, comic strips and other 2D animation – aside from the 1980 Robert Altman live-action film – to the colourful world of CG.
Tartakovsky cautions that this is no trailer, nor is it even a clip from the film. The voices are temporary and it’s really designed to give a feeling of his plans for bringing Popeye to life. No, there’s no spinach-gobbling here, but there is plenty of the squishy, physics-defying animation the director has become known for. It could certainly be an interesting take on the character, but we’ll have to wait to see more.
The film doesn’t have a set release date, but appears to be arriving next year.