![]() But for us lucky elementary schools, like mine a few years back, we had access to these graphic novels, with each chapter in the elastically entertaining franchise introducing us to new characters, both good and bad, and leaving us curious about what kind of evil Captain U will put extinct next. ![]() Considering the series' unrelenting tone for creative toilet jokes, it's no surprise that librarians from state to state have banned the books from their shelves, concerned that such "repulsive" humor would warp kids' fragile little minds. Plus, to be blunt, the title of each of the stories in this series begins with Captain Underpants. Dav Pilkey's intentionally immature saga of books, which involves two pranksters who hypnotize their elementary school principal by turning him into their comic book creation Captain Underpants, has not only caught the attention of parents concerned about their offspring's reading habits, but has also baffled and shocked school librarians, teachers, and other related staff thanks to the books' bold potty humor that's given it such a popular following. So just the sticky-ness of that premise I think has been really a big reason people have gravitated towards it.If there's any children's chapter book series that spurred insane levels of controversy across schools nationwide, it's Captain Underpants. It’s such a simple concept for starters - it’s classic wish fulfilment about these two best friends, wildly imaginative kids who hypnotize their terrible principal and turn him into their comic book creation. You said you wished you had come up with the idea for Captain Underpants yourself, what is it about the characters and the stories that you think is so interesting? The books are actually very smart, they are subversive and there is actually a lot more going on under the surface of those things, and the movie as well. The visuals are really playful and the actors brought a ton of different kind of humour to the table, too. You can’t really do a Captain Underpants movie without having a little bit of that in there - and honestly it is part of the fun of it - but we really did try to round out the movie as a character-based comedy, specifically. We held ourselves to a very high standard with our potty-humour jokes, and really didn’t opt to go there in less the jokes were truly hilarious. We actually had countless conversations about the toilet humour. How did you decide what amount of toilet-humour was the right amount? Hopefully we’ve managed to have to movie play to multiple levels in audiences. I think there is plenty there for the younger audiences and it is a very physical comedy. And then we have for kids, this is about a middle-aged man running around in his underpants wearing a curtain as a cape and thinking he’s a superhero when he actually has zero powers other than being super dumb. those guys all have a huge fan base in their 20s and 30s. Our cast was a huge part of that too, and the decision-making of hiring Ed Helms and Kevin Hart and Thomas Middleditch and Jordan Peele and Nick Kroll. ![]() The way we approached that is having someone like (Nicholas) Stoller writing the screenplay - who comes from a more adult live-action comedy background - as a good way to elevate the material for an older audience. I think normally we wouldn’t be going after 20-somethings or 30-somethings, but in this case there is such a big nostalgia factor for the books that we wanted to target that group but also really target the kids that are just learning to read now and are getting introduced to the books and hopefully bring new people to the movie who have never come in contact with the books either. ![]()
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