Right now, if you go to social networks like Twitter and Facebook, you can see what your friends and contacts would look like as characters from Charles Schultz's Peanuts comic strip. This is thanks to a promotional Peanutize Me campaign that is closely tied into the release date of The Peanuts Movie.
Peanutize Me is a website that is causing a stir as users can go in and design their own Peanuts character. It uses the style of 3D animation that will be in the upcoming Peanuts movie, which is the first time that Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Linus, Lucy, and the whole gang will appear as three-dimensional characters. Users can design a character and choose a gender, skin color, hair style, eyes, mouth, shirt, pants, shoes, plus other accessories like glasses and even a fitness band. Once a character is created, it can be easily shared on Twitter and Facebook.
The character that you see in the image is the one that I designed, and kind of looks like me. According to Time, Steve Martino, director of The Peanuts Movie, says that "you build the character that represents you. And since these are Peanuts characters, they sort of point to people's inner child".
As you might have guessed, the Peanutize Me website is meant to promote the upcoming Peanuts movie. A similar campaign of Simpsonize Me was used in cooperation with Burger King during the 2007 release of The Simpsons Movie.
As far as The Peanuts Movie is concerned, a recent trailer reveals more of the story. It shows that a new girl has moved to town, and this is probably the infamous "Little Red Haried Girl" that Charlie Brown was infatuated with for decades in the Peanuts comic strip. It looks like Charlie Brown is attempting to ask her to a dance of some type, but it worried that his reputation for being...Charlie Brown is going to get in the way. Snoopy is along to help him out, and it looks like he will have his own plotline going on with the Red Baron.
The Peanuts Movie is a family movie from Blue Sky, creators of computer animated franchises like Ice Age and Rio. Even though Peanuts is one of the biggest and most loved franchises in America, it is still a risk to attempt in the CG realm. Peanuts would be difficult to adapt, as the comic strip always seemed to show how timeless childhood is. Today's children now have cellular phones and tablets, and this age of technology couldn't have been addressed as Charles Schultz stopped doing Peanuts in 1999, shortly before his passing.
There are three possible outcomes for The Peanuts Movie. The first is that it will be good, and successfully capture the magic of the Peanuts franchise with an updated twist for a modern age, which will lead to inevitable sequels. The second is the more probable, and that the studio will mess it up worse than the recent Fantastic Four movie. The third is probably the worst of the two, is that the film is so forgettable that no one will remember it after it is released to DVD/Blu-ray.
