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Marmaduke gets a movie – who else should have one?

Alan Gardner341 mins

Another exercise in wishful thinking. With the live action Marmaduke movie coming out, which comic strps would make great movies? TelevisionWithoutPity.com came up with own list:

Calvin and Hobbes
Get Fuzzy
Spy vs. Spy
Bloom County/Outland
Liberty Meadows
FoxTrot
Little Nemo in Slumberland
Zippy the Pinhead
Prince Valiant

Which strips are missing on this list?

34 thoughts on “Marmaduke gets a movie – who else should have one?”

  1. On the TelevisionWithoutPity list:

    Calvin and Hobbes – No, and won’t happen at least until Watterson is dead.

    Get Fuzzy – No.

    Spy vs. Spy – I’d like to see a really good traditionally animated version of this, maybe a CGI version. Not live action.

    Bloom County/Outland – You know, I could go for a live action version of this, just to see what they’d do. A real penguin? Yeah. I probably wouldn’t like the movie, but I’d like to see what they would come up with.

    Liberty Meadows – No.

    FoxTrot – It could work, but I wouldn’t like it.

    Little Nemo in Slumberland – Wasn’t this done long, long ago? There was a Broadway show of it at least, as I recall. It could work, I think.

    Zippy the Pinhead – Heh, a funny thought, but no.

    Prince Valiant – I could go for this one as well.

    I’d love to see some adaptations of some other adventure strips, too, like Terry and the Pirates. I’m generally of the opinion that comic strips shouldn’t be made into movies, but I can make an exception for adventure strips.

  2. Most of these could be adapted into good (or at least fun) films, but I suspect they’d be turned into festering piles of fecal matter by hacky screenwriters who don’t respect the source material.

    Of course, I could be a bit jaded, since my childhood died while watching the Garfield Movie.

  4. Calvin & Hobbes
    Bloom County (w/updated topics)
    Liberty Meadows
    Prince Valiant would be a good “niche” movie. I’d watch it.
    Blondie had about 2 dozen films in the late 1930s to early 1950s. It’d be hard to top those.

  8. “Oh, and Funky Winkerbean”

    You could just watch “The English Patient” or “Schindler’s List” and in your mind change the main characters’s names to Lisa, Les and Funky.

    As long as there is horrific suffering, tragedy, crushed dreams and then some kind of disease or death, it’d be about the same.

    You could probably also do the same with ‘Crankshaft’: just replace Bruno Ganz’s Hitler with Ed Crankshaft.

    It’d be real close.

  9. Of course, in the above post I was referring to the movie ‘Downfall.’

    Gad I wish this board had an edit feature.

    Or that I could type.

  10. Weren’t there rumors of a Penny Arcade movie? If it was animated, then it could win the feature animation category for the Reuben and the infiltration will have begun!

  11. Calvin and Hobbes: Never happen.
    Get Fuzzy: ?? Maybe? Haven’t heard anything.
    Spy vs. Spy: Love to see some more animations of it, hopefully in the upcoming Cartoon Network show.
    Bloom County: I wish.
    Liberty Meadows: Development Hell.
    Fox Trot: love to see it animated. Maybe after the Simpsons.
    Little Nemo: Done in Japan in the eighties.
    Zippy the Pinhead: Never heard of it, let alone know anything about any developments.
    Prince Valiant: Done twice, that I know of. One was Robert Wagner’s first film, the other was a German production from 1997, I believe.

    Ones I’d like to see: A GOOD Flash Gordon remake, like the Buster Crabbe serials. Not that the 1979 version was bad, I actually quite like it. But the scifi tv show was just horrid. I hope they do it right next time ’round.

    I ‘d concur with Ben about Terry and the Pirates. That would be fun to see.

    I’d also like to see Secret Agent X-9, but I have never seen the serials.

  13. I’d like to see Pearls made into a series of 5 minute shorts that play prior to seeing a movie in the theater. Reviving the fun of the pink panther shorts and host of other cartoons that used to grace the screen prior to movies. This would be more interesting than upcoming movie ads (and face it, there is no point in newsreels anymore). 😉

  15. Heart of the City.
    Agnes.
    Elderberries.
    Monkeyhouse.
    Watch Your Head.

    I second the idea of the Pearls shorts.

  17. I wouldn’t mind seeing “FoxTrot” animated, but there’s so many animated works focusing on a family that this would be one too many.

    An animated Keith Knight cartoon would be great. I wish there are animators like Jim Tyer that’s still alive; guys like him would have fun animating in Keith’s style.

  18. I think Pogo would make a great movie, if its done right, in the style of Kelly. Maybe produce a feature film on Pogo in Pandemonium, the art of the film would look really great and the story is great too.
    I think it would have to be traditionally animated though as it would go well with Kelly’s style.

  19. I was recently contacted by a couple of agents at William Morris in terms of optioning Scary Gary for an animated television program. I know how slow moving these things can go, so I’m trying to curb my enthusiasm accordingly. But it’s still pretty exciting, even though they’re obviously trying to jump aboard the bandwagon of vampire popularity.

  20. I was recently contacted by a couple of agents at William Morris in terms of optioning Scary Gary for an animated television program. I know how slow moving these things can go, so I?m trying to curb my enthusiasm accordingly. But it?s still pretty exciting, even though they?re obviously trying to jump aboard the bandwagon of vampire popularity.

  23. Pogo? Why not? Perhaps Bob Newhart could play the title role.

    How about Shoe–with Jack Nicholson as Shoe and Abe Vigoda as Perfesser Cosmo Fishhawk?

    The Family Circus??? (lol) Not unless Paris Hilton is starring as Mommy!! (lol)

  24. I’d like to see Prince Valiant done right: it could be a classic sword & sorcery epic.I believe Popeye and Buck Rogers are being done again. Pogo is just about the greatest comic strip ever, but I don’t know if the spirit of Kelly’s dialogue and language could be adequately captured. He created something that would too hard to interpret in any other medium. Maybe L’il Abner could work, but Americans aren’t very familiar with him as they once were.

  27. MY GUESSES:
    Alley Oop
    Gasoline Alley
    Mary Worth
    Winnie Winkle
    Brenda Starr
    Apartment 3-G
    Rex Morgan, M.D.
    The Phantom
    Mandrake the Magician
    Pogo
    For Better or For Worse
    Archie
    My Cage
    Rose is Rose
    Nancy
    Opus
    Family Circus
    Hagar the Horrible
    Barney Google and Snuffy Smith
    Heathcliff
    Annie (not like the 1982 movie musical version)
    Peanuts (The late John Hughes was planning a live action movie version of this years ago but it never got off the ground)

  28. It makes sense that Buck Rogers and Popeye are going into retread. Both properties are owned by inheritors’ trusts, and they have to do something big every twenty-five years or so to keep the copyrights active. We had the TV series 30 years ago, Altman’s Popeye movie in 1980 and the Burroughs estate did that Greystoke movie with Christopher Lambert in 1983 to keep Tarzan’s franchise alive (expect a Tarzan project soon) – I had some minor connections to both the Buck Rogers and Greystone projects back then.

    I have serious reservations about turning comic strips into full length movies – or even half hour sitcoms. Comic strips are something like visual one-liners that occasionally do well with occasional stories extended over the space of a week or two. Most of them cannot support plausible story lines without some very contrived (and contorted) scripting. It’s a lot easier to wirk within the traditional 7-minute format, and would I LOVE to see DECENT cartoons come back to theaters. Has anybody thought of doing ultra-shorts along the lines of Bill Plympton’s Plymptoons?

    As others have pointed out, the adventure strips are probably best suited to longer forms; I rather enjoyed The Phantom sixteen years ago.

    Afterthought: would it be possible to do a decent Liberty Meadows with less than an R rating?

  29. Steve…
    McDonald’s will do that to you.I especially like the chocolate milk part.

    Calvin and Hobbes w/o question would lead any and all choices, hands down.

    A blue version of Family Circus starring Johnny Depp would be interesting.

  33. I would love to see a POGO animated movie, done in Kelly’s style using in some way his graphic style of writing. I mean, how do you speak in Old English?

    Calvin and Hobbs would be my next choice, but Watterson has made it clear that won’t happen.

    There were some well received stage plays for Lil’ Abner and Kudzu, so we know those have possibilities.

    I miss Shoe. I don’t think the magic is there anymore tho’.
    Same with B.C. I learned how to draw copying Hart and Schulz.

    There are/were so many good comic strips, it’s hard to pick one that would be a sure hit.

    Dag, this is hard…

  34. OK, I’ll say it if none of the other guys will…

    I’d like to see Little Annie Fanny made into a movie.

    Live or animated-either one will work just fine for me.

    (I think it would be a HUGE hit.

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