Frankly, we're surprised this didn't happen sooner. After decades of franchising that has led Charlie Brown and gang to shill for insurance, greetings cards, vacuum cleaners, root beer and more — not to mention the countless TV specials, many of which are holiday classics — "Peanuts" is finally getting the big screen treatment for the first time in decades.
Fox and Blue Sky Animation have snapped up the rights, and are planning a franchise (naturally) with Charlie, Linus, Lucy, Snoopy, Schroeder and everyone else to make their feature film debut. So mark your calendars, because the first movie will arrive on November 25, 2015 — just in time for Thanksgiving, and also nicely tied into the 65th anniversary of the comic series. Steve Martino ("Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears A Who!," "Ice Age: Continental Drift") will direct, with Bryan Schulz and Cornelius Uliano penning the script.
As much as we'd usually complain about our childhood memories being pillaged, Blue Sky has actually done respectably with Dr. Seuss books, and frankly we're just relieved it won't be a CGI/live action hybrid like "Alvin & The Chipmunks" and "The Smurfs" (right guys?). And considering it took two years for this deal to get signed, we presume the Schulz family wanted to make sure it was going to be done right. And really, considering how much marketing has been done around these cartoon characters, it's hard to get too up in arms about a big budget, animated Hollywood movie at this point. [Deadline]
What kind of know-nothings do they get to write these things? In addition to A BOY NAMED CHARLIE BROWN and RACE FOR YOUR LIFE, CHARLIE BROWN, there was SNOOPY COME HOME in 72. How hard would it have been to do a little research on this?
Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown was another feature film. Mid-70s
What do you mean, "finally"? A BOY NAMED CHARLIE BROWN (1969), where Charlie enters a spelling bee, was one of the formative movies of my childhood. Have you never heard of it? To this day I can spell correctly because of the "I before E" song.
Oh brother.