Ask most individuals who the best-selling superhero in comics is and also you’d most likely hear guesses like Batman, Spider-Man or Deadpool. But anybody who has raised a child since 2016 is aware of the actual reply is Dog Man, Dav Pilkey’s wacky canine crusader, whose exploits have offered over 60 million copies via writer Scholastic. And now Dog Man is able to make his Hollywood debut. Universal right now introduced that an animated Dog Man function developed by Dreamworks will debut on Friday, January 31, 2025.
According to the studio, the function is directed by Peter Hastings, an Emmy award profitable animator (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Pinky and the Brain) who efficiently tailored Pilkey’s earlier kids-comics blockbusterCaptain Underpants in two animated collection and a film particular. Karen Foster is producing.
Dog Man will recount the hero’s origin story the place a police officer and a canine are merged collectively in life-saving surgical procedure. The ensuing human mutt faithfully protects the neighborhood from his arch-foe Petey the Cat till the arrival of an lovely kitten-clone throws a brand new ball of yarn into the combination.
As followers of the collection know, Dog Man debuted within the pages of Pilkey’s Captain Underpants and the Terrifying Return of Tippy Tinkletrousersand was in style sufficient with the title’s prepubescent followers that he made a triumphant solo debut in August, 2016. Since then, there have been 12 books within the collection, showing at a fee of two per 12 months within the early days earlier than settling into an annual launch schedule lately. Each has been an enormous bestseller, with preliminary print runs of tens of millions of copies. As such, Dog Man is without doubt one of the Most worthy comic-based IPs developed this century.
Pilkey has been creating books and comics for teenagers for over 37 years, profitable a Caldecott honor for The Paperboy in 1996. He has stated his work is semi-autobiographical and explores common themes of friendship and the triumph of the nice hearted. Pilkey spun Dog Man off into one other best-selling collection, Cat Kid Comic Clubin 2020.
A function movie animated adaptation of Captain Underpants in 2017 grossed over $125 million worldwide on a finances of $38 million.