EW talk to Andrew Farago (Cartoon Art Museum) about the upcoming Peasnuts 3D CGI feature adaptation of one of the most loved cartoon strips:
It’s hard to imagine any comic strip taking hold today the way that Peanuts has for several generations. Any 8- or 80-year-old knows what a security blanket is, or who Peppermint Patty’s best friend is, or “Good Grief!” and “Curse you, Red Baron!” Charles Schulz was beloved by millions — and that’s a conservative number — worldwide, and everyone knows Charlie Brown and Snoopy. If Schulz had been more comfortable in the public eye, he could have been another Walt Disney in terms of universal celebrity. But he was always about the work, and letting his characters speak for him, and I get the impression that’s exactly how he wanted it.
No matter how the movie does at the box office, we’ll always have the Peanuts comic strip. Fantagraphics Books has been reprinting the strip in its entirety dating back to the first one in 1950, and as long as the movie reminds people about the comic strip and the man behind it, I’ll be happy. There’s a great early Peanuts strip where Charlie Brown and Patty find her parents’ record collection and are amused by an album featuring the song Old Rockin’ Chair’s Got Me. They sit and listen to the song, and Charlie Brown asks in the final panel, “What in the world is a ‘rocking chair’?” as they’re surrounded by the latest new-fangled 1950s furniture. That humor gave way to jokes about hula hoops, transistor radios, and countless other fads over the next five decades, but the characters and their personalities, those stories are timeless.