DreamWorks Animation has won a heated auction to acquire the feature film rights of Captain Underpants, the popular 8-volume book series by Dav Pilkey.



The storys focus on "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 has is currently working on the ninth book in the series called Captain Underpants and the Terrifying Return of Tippy Tinkletrousers for Scholastic.



According to DreamWorks' Bill Damaschke, this is a project the studio had been chasing down since Pilkey first began publishing the series in 1997. Up until now, the author did not want to sell the rights. Here is what he had to say:

“I know he’d been approached many times, and finally, Kassie Evashevski at UTA and Amy Berkower at Writers House phoned us and simply said, ‘He’s ready." There’s a great anarchic combination of kid and adult humor, and George and Harold are these terrific mischievous characters. And we felt that hypnotizing the principal is one of those great ideas. We’re all big fans of the book.”

I am not familiar with the books, but this sounds like a perfect book to be turned into a movie. What are your thoughts?