Paul Feig Talks About Why The Peanuts Movie Got Him Choked Up

Paul Feig’s name has hit the headlines with increasing regularity since he was announced as commander-in-chief on the next Ghostbusters movie. Batting aside a barrage of questions and comments from fans and trolls alike, the director is barely able to address any other projects he may be involved in. Luckily, he’s now been granted that opportunity, as the folks over at Collider chatted to Feig this week about the big-screen version of Peanuts.

The upcoming movie, a 3D CGI extravaganza, hails from 20th Century Fox and Blue Sky, whose inspiration is none other than Charles Schulz’s universally-loved comic. While plenty of detractors voiced their concerns about a big screen rebrand, with Schulz’s son Craig on scripting duties, Feig producing and Horton Hears A Who director Steve Martino at the helm, this looks like a slam dunk.

During the interview, Feig offered up his opinion on the modern-day version, and his thoughts on how it’s progressing:

It’s very sweet. It’s totally a G-rated movie, because you can’t get edgy with Charlie Brown. That was the Schulz family’s fear, that me and Fox everybody were gonna come in and hip it up and cast Justin Bieber as Charlie Brown and have it like Space Jam or something. All of us were like, ‘No.’. We cast kids that sound exactly like the kids you remember from the specials. It’s very pure of heart.

I’m really happy with it. It’s a scary thing to take on, but also Charles Shulz’s son and grandson and the grandson’s writing partner are the writers on it. So we’ve been guiding it along for quite a while, it’s been almost two years now. Steve Martino from Blue Sky is directing it, and he and that team are so religious about wanting to keep it the way—everything we loved about it.

When I first came onboard they were already in the beginnings of developing it and Steve and the Blue Sky team showed me the preliminary artwork and some of the animation, and I literally got so choked up because the minute it came out I was like, ‘They cracked it. It’s so true to what it is.’ And weirdly the CGI makes it almost work a little better in a weird way because they made it feel like the cartoons, but it just has enough of a—realism’s not the right word, it just kind of comes off the screen in a way where you feel like they’re real. It’s very bizarre, I’m so excited about it.

With a release date still several months away, it will be a while until audiences are able to experience that same emotional pull. Hearing such positive – and very honest – responses from the producer is an incredibly encouraging sign that may sway those aforementioned naysayers. We’ll find out more when the Peanuts movie opens in theaters on November 6th.