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DreamWorks Animation is dressing down to its skivvies, tapping Rob Letterman to direct Captain Underpants, The Hollywood Reporter has learned exclusively.
Nicholas Stoller has written the script for Captain Underpants, which adapts the popular kids’ books by Dav Pilkey.
Underpants centers on two fourth-graders who are best friends and who draw comics that they sell on the playground. Their creation, Captain Underpants, becomes real when the duo accidentally hypnotize the school’s mean principal, who turns into an actual superhero.
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Scholastic first launched Underpants in September of 1997, and there now are more than 50 million Pilkey books in print in the U.S. alone. Eight Underpants books have been published in 19 countries, and several have debuted at No. 1 on various best-seller lists, including The New York Times and USA Today.
DWA development executive Damon Ross is overseeing the project, which does not have a release date.
Stoller may have started off on the raunchy side of the film business (he wrote and directed Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Get Him to the Greek) but lately has been spending time with the fuzzily funny Muppets, co-writing 2011’s The Muppets and next year’s sequel, Muppets Most Wanted. He currently is back in R-rated territory with his latest feature, Neighbors, which stars Seth Rogen and Zac Efron, hitting theaters in May 2014.
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Letterman is a DWA pro, having directed Shark Tale and Monsters vs. Aliens for the studio.
Letterman and Stoller worked together on 2010’s Gulliver’s Travels, the Jack Black comedy fantasy that Letterman directed (it was his live-action debut) and Stoller co-wrote.
Stoller is repped by UTA and Ziffren Brittenham. Letterman is repped by WME.
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