I remember as a kid always going to the Sunday paper and reading the full color comic strips like The Far Side and Calvin and Hobbes. Since both of those strips ended, I rarely read the funnies any more but I still find myself looking back over Bill Watterson’s collected works. Calvin and Hobbes transcends the comic strip and is something much more special.
A question often asked is if we will ever see a Calvin and Hobbes movie. In a recent interview with Mental Floss magazine, Watterson was asked about his opinion on the animated works of Pixar and whether he thinks a Calvin and Hobbes movie could work.
The visual sophistication of Pixar blows me away, but I have zero interest in animating Calvin and Hobbes. If you’ve ever compared a film to a novel it’s based on, you know the novel gets bludgeoned. It’s inevitable, because different media have different strengths and needs, and when you make a movie, the movie’s needs get served. As a comic strip, Calvin and Hobbes works exactly the way I intended it to. There’s no upside for me in adapting it.
I am sure the man has been asked hundreds of times and offered boatloads of money for the rights to Calvin and Hobbes. You have to respect his desire to keep his creation the way he intended it no matter how badly we would love to see the characters brought to life on the big screen. Unless he has a stipulation in his will, if a Calvin and Hobbes movie is going to happen it would likely be after Watterson’s passing.
Still, at least fans on the Internet can keep our hope alive with videos like this: