Despite a syndication run that began in 1960 and a circulation of over 1,500 newspapers across the United States, Family Circus hasn’t made the jump to the big screen like so many of its contemporaries. For better or worse. No, I really mean that. I wasn’t referencing the comic For Better Or Worse. Just keep reading.

Garfield

Garfield is arguably the most famous comic strip ever created. Jim Davis’s strip took popular culture by storm with several books, toys, suction cup thingies, and cartoons. In 2004, a Garfield movie opened in theaters featuring a mix of live action and CGI. However, quality did not enter the mix. I tried to watch it on a dare. Probably made it eight minutes, and I want those minutes back.

Popeye

Robert Altman poured nightmare sauce on many a childhood when he adapted Popeye for the big screen in 1980. This strange translation stars Robin Williams as the sailorman and Shelly Duvall as his anorexic lady love. Though critics were split in their reviews of the film, it works so much better as a trippy, French art-house picture than it does a comedy.

Flash Gordon

Flash Gordon was a dud at the box office but is still considered a science fiction classic. The lead, Sam J. Jones, is rumored to have had a falling out with the director and producer and walked from the project before the completion of post-production. His voice was later replaced by an unnamed voice actor. Wow. Even the voice actor didn’t want to be associated with it.

Tim Burton will reunite with Ed Wood screenwriters Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski to bring dark humor and spiral staircases to the 3D stop motion animated The Addams Family. The new adaptation will be more faithful to the original Charles Addams drawings in The New Yorker, and less faithful to Christopher Llyod. The writers want "the tone to be as darkly funny and subversive as the Addams drawings, and we’ve come up with an approach that nobody has ever done before."

This pairing gets a huge thumbs up on my end. Ed Wood might be my favorite Tim Burton movie ever, and Alexander and Karaszewski also wrote The People vs. Larry Flynt, another fantastic biopic. The Addams Family seems to be more in Burton’s wheelhouse than in the writers’s, but perhaps they can rein Burton in when he decides that EVERYTHING needs to look like a bad LSD trip. (Deadline)

Update: Tim Burton’s people (ghouls in suits) told MTV, and I’m paraphrasing, "This rumor is bullsh*t! Oogie boogie!" They then quickly dug a hole in the earth and jumped in.

But seriously, he isn’t doing this movie.

To further prove his dominance over the Curlz MT font, Tim Burton has signed on to adapt The Addams Family into a 3D, stop-motion film as is his way. One has to wonder if he was more attracted to the source material or the big box office raked in by a 3D version of an established franchise. Given his track record these last few years, I’d say he’s more attracted to long green than pale flesh.

The characters will be based upon the drawings of Charles Addams that frequently appeared in The New Yorker and despite what you may or may not have heard this is in no way an attempt to punk out The Addams Family and Addams Family Values director Barry Sonnenfeld. He took care of that himself by directing Big Trouble. (Deadline)