It's impressive just how recognizable Popeye remains in the pop culture consciousness despite the character not being in anything major in years. Just say the words "I yam what I yam" or crack open some spinach, and people of all ages are bound to invoke the name of Popeye. At one point, though, the modern perception of the character was set to get a massive boost from a new animated feature film by director Genndy Tartakovsky. This project, originally set up at Sony Pictures Animation, would never see the light of day, even if it did frequently show a sense of resilience on par with its titular sailor.
The saga of this Popeye movie begins a few years before Tartakovsky set his eyes on this project. In March 2010, Sony announced that an upcoming project from its Sony Pictures Animation division would be a Popeye movie. Avi Arad was attached as a producer at this stage. Though his name may not be familiar to all moviegoers, Arad is the producer of all the Spider-Man movies, including offshoots like Venom and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. Being a steady presence across this franchise put Arad in Sony's good graces and it's no surprise that they'd want him to oversee another comic book adaptation for the studio.
However, Popeye would soon be driven by another person who'd gotten on Sony's good side. In the Summer of 2012, Genndy Tartakovsky was wrapping up Hotel Transylvania, which wouldn't be released until that September. After years of failed starts with other filmmakers, Hotel Transylvania to the finish line thanks to the work of Tarkovsky, which felt like a momentous feat itself even before the feature became a smash hit. It's clear Sony/Columbia Pictures would both want to keep this guy around as well as put him in charge of a modern take on Popeye.
Talking to MTV in 2012, this filmmaker revealed that Popeye and other comic book characters were responsible for inspiring his lifelong love for animation. He also expressed excitement over getting to make a big animated movie where the comedy would come from visual gags and physicality rather than quippy one-liners or pop culture references. At the time, he mentioned that his greatest challenge was figuring out how to make a classic character like Popeye work for contemporary audiences, a problem that would keep cropping up as the feature moves further and further into production.
By the end of 2012, Popeye was in good enough shape to secure a September 2014 release date, which was quickly delayed to an unspecified 2015 slot. At this point, Hotel Transylvania was quite clearly a box office smash and Sony Pictures Animation was looking to turn it into a franchise. Initially, that sequel had no director attached, but by early 2014, it was revealed that Tarkovsky would be helming Hotel Transylvania 2 in addition to directing Popeye, which was now further postponed to a 2016 drop. Sony Pictures Animation was hoping that Tarkovsky's experience juggling multiple episodes of a TV show at once in his days on the small screen would mean that he'd be capable of directing multiple potential box office hits for this studio.
In September 2014, the general public got a peek at Tarkovsky's ambitions for Popeye through an animation test that was dropped on YouTube. The quick video, making use of Tom Kenny and Grey DeLisle as Popeye and Olive Oyl, respectively, gave an immediate feel for how Tarkovsky would be translating the zany physicality of this classic character into CG animation. As a way of getting people excited for a new take on this sailor, it did its job and then some. This fresh vision of Popeye looked to be loaded with potential, even just in terms of being a vehicle for visual gags.
In March 2015, Tartakovsky left Popeye. In an interview with Cartoon Brew six months later, Tartakovsky delved into the specifics of why Popeye had failed to move forward. While a screening of a rough cut of the movie went well, afterward, no Sony executives would really talk to Tartakovsky about Popeye. eventually, the filmmaker reached out to the former head of Sony Pictures, Amy Pascal, for clarity on what was going on. This is where Pascal said plainly that the studio just wasn't interested in the Popeye character, or at least, not the way Tartakovsky was wanting to explore the character.
The director also noted that the initial screening of the film happened around the same time as the Sony hack in the final months of 2014, which left the studio in a vulnerable space. It wouldn't be a surprise if the demise of this incarnation of Popeye was partially due to Sony not wanting to take any major risks while anything attached to the name Sony was under so much scrutiny. Afterward, occasional news pieces would emerge over the idea of Sony Pictures Animation continuing to pursue a new take on Popeye with a fresh creative team, but nothing ever came of it.
In 2020, it appeared that a miracle had occurred for Tartakovsky's Popeye with the news that King Features Syndicate (which owns the rights to Popeye as a comics character) was now in control of film rights to the sailor. With this development, the company wanted this director to helm a Popeye motion picture once again. It was a glorious moment, but it wouldn't amount to much in the long run. Tartakovsky confirmed in July 2022 that his Popeye was once again dead in the water for unspecified reasons.
The struggles that Genndy Tartakovsky faced in even trying to get his Popeye movie off the ground reflect the troubles that plague so many artists trying to reinvent a property they hold near and dear to their hearts. Movie studios and the executives that run them love familiar characters, but they often love the qualities that made them so famous in the first place. In trying to make a Popeye movie true to both the character's roots and Tartakovsky's vision, this director ran up against Sony brass who were engaging in this very same paradox. Popeye remains an incredibly recognizable fictional character, but it can be a struggle to get people with money and power to understand why and how he got to that level of visibility.