Sony Pictures greenlit an All-CGI Cartoon film based on the Popeye comic strips and animated shorts in 2010, and Genndy Tartakovsky was announced to direct it in 2012 fresh off the success of Hotel Transylvania. A test footage just over a minute long was released in September 2014, but the project was eventually cancelled mid-production in 2015. It was an especially tragic case, as Tartakovsky's animation instructor was a former Fleischer Studios animator. Popeye was voiced by Tom Kenny and Olive Oyl was voiced by Grey DeLisle.
In May 2020, it was announced that a new Popeye movie is in development at King Features Syndicate, with Tartakovsky coming back to helm the project without Sony's involvement (as their rights to the character expired a couple years earlier).
In July 2022, an animatic of the original Sony film was leaked online, complete with fully voiced dialogue. It also details what the plot of the movie was:
The film follows Popeye who washes ashore on Sea Haven as an infant inside a spinach crate. Growing up an orphan who is mocked for being different from everyone else, one day a mysterious red jewel washes ashore and shows him visions of his father. Skipping ahead a few years, Popeye now in his early 20s along with Jeep and a reluctant Olive Oyl set out across the ocean to find his father; all while being pursued by the Sea Hag.
The test footage of the original project can be watched here
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The test footage and animatic of this project provides examples of:
- 11th-Hour Superpower: At the climax of the story, just when it seems that the Sea Hag had finished him off, Popeye finds a can of spinach and, after recalling all the moments that he ate it to resolve previous conflicts, downs the entire can to give himself full power to bounce back (as shown by being given his trademark anchor tattoos), defeat the Sea Hag and rescuing Olive and all of Sea Haven.
- Action Girl: Olive, much more so than in previous adaptations.
- Adaptation Expansion: In the original comic strip, spinach was implied to have natural super-powering properties. In this film, Popeye gaining superhuman strength from spinach is explained as the Sea Hag's jewel granting him the ability as a baby.
- Adaptational Nice Guy: Poopdeck Pappy is considerably nicer and more caring initially than his previous appearances.
- Ambiguous Time Period: The boat Popeye and Olive are on wouldn't look out of place in The '30s, the era in which the comic strips and animated shorts were made and took place. Popeye wears noticeably modern sneakers here and what appears to be a T-shirt, meanwhile.
- Batter Up!: The sky pirate who's after Eugene the Jeep tries to hit him with a baseball bat.
- Be Yourself: Popeye soon learns that being 'one of a kind' is not a good thing, it's a great thing.
- Big Bad: The Sea Hag.
- Big Bad Wannabe: Despite being the de-facto antagonist in the series, Bluto's role in the story is noticeably smaller, as one run-in with the Sea Hag causes him to completely cease his search for Popeye and Olive until the Darkest Hour moment.
- Boarding Party: Popeye and Olive are on a boat at sea, and it's boarded by sky pirates who are after them.
- Damsel in Distress: As per tradition within the franchise, Olive finds herself in many situations that require Popeye to save her from.
- Darkest Hour: After believing the Sea Hag had done away with his father, Popeye undergoes quite the Despair Event Horizon, as he gives up and takes Olive back to Bluto.
- Deadly Dodging: In addition to the Teleport Spam maneuver of the Jeep that's detailed below, Olive inadvertently causes two sky pirates to knock into each other's head when trying to escape them.
- Deal with the Devil: In the prologue, Pappy brings a sick baby Popeye to the Sea Hag in the hopes that she could cure the baby's sickness. She decides to do so...but at the cost of taking Popeye away from his father.
- Demoted to Extra: Wimpy, despite being a major player in the comics and original cartoons, only appears briefly being given a wild ride in a taxi by a sleepwalking Olive and as the officiator at Olive and Bluto's wedding.
- Disguised in Drag: Popeye and Olive plan to steal the jewel back from the sky pirates by using a "female approach". Both of them step out dressed as female pirates until Olive confusingly points out that it'd make more sense for her to do it. She ends up completely blowing it until Popeye steps out and all of the pirates immediately fall for 'Poppy'.
- Ejection Seat: Popeye's boat is equipped with a catapult-like ejection seat, which he quickly weaponizes against the sky pirates.
- Group Hug: Popeye, Pappy, the Jeep, and Olive have this at the end. They don't take too kindly when Bluto tried to join in, though.
- I Am What I Am: Popeye coins one of his many catchphrases to show his growth in learning to Be Yourself.Popeye: All I know, is that I yam what I yam, and that 'am' is okay with me!
- I Should Have Done This Years Ago: At the end of the story, Popeye finally manages to sock Bluto after all the years of abuse the latter put him through at the orphanage.
- I Will Find You: Popeye's primary goal in the story is to find and reunite with his father.
- Irony: Amidst the sky pirate fight, Popeye tries to reassure Olive and promises to save her... only to get punched and dragged in the fight repeatedly. Olive lampshades this by asking who's gonna save him.Popeye: Don't worry, Miss Oyl, I'll saves ya!
(Popeye immediately gets punched away)
Olive: Save me?! Who's gonna save you?! - It's Raining Men: The sky pirates who attack the boat are projected in the air from somewhere (Catapult to Glory, perhaps) and land in the water near the boat. Olive uses the expression word-for-word when she sees them coming.
- Large Ham: Olive Oyl.
- MacGuffin: A magical red jewel which acts as the Sea Hag's other eye and grants her beauty and life.
- The Man in the Mirror Talks Back: Olive talks to her reflection at several points. The first time she does, it even notices Popeye's coming before she does and tells her to stop talking to herself. And it's her reflection that eventually convinces her to embrace who she really wants to be instead of just being "The girl from the house on the hill" all her life.
- Mythology Gag: Olive's sleepwalking escapade is a reference to the theatrical cartoon "A Dream Walking", right down to using an instumental of the song for background music.
- No Smoking: Popeye doesn't have his trademark corn cob pipe here.
- Orphanage of Love: Popeye was raised in one here.
- Pint-Sized Powerhouse:
- Eugene the Jeep is small, but cleverly uses Teleport Spam to get rid of several large sky pirates via Deadly Dodging.
- Popeye himself, when he was just a baby, ate some spinach to pummel an octopus that was threatening him out at sea.
- Redemption Earns Life: After seeing the people of Sea Haven heckling the Sea Hag as she is dying, Popeye decides to do the right thing and return her jewel to her.
- Rhymes on a Dime: The pelican narrator speaks this way.
- Running Gag: The obnoxious fish popping up to comment on the action, or just attempt to steal the spotlight, only to be eaten by the pelican narrator.
- Save the Villain: After pummeling her goons and her vulture to kingdom come, Popeye catches the Sea Hag just before she plummeted to her death.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: After an encounter with the Sea Hag, Bluto gives up entirely on looking for Popeye and Olive, but doesn't want to go back to Sea Haven over fear of being a coward. So he decides to wait it out until before the climax when a distraught Popeye returns Olive to him.
- Talk to the Fist: Popeye gets punched in the face by a sky pirate while he's telling Olive that she shouldn't worry and that he will save her.
- Teleport Spam: Eugene the Jeep performs an impressive series of Deadly Dodgings using his teleportation power against a sky pirate who's armed with a baseball bat, making said sky pirate hit several of his comrades — and eventually himself — in rapid succession with the bat instead.
- Villain with Good Publicity: Bluto is beloved by everyone in Sea Haven, despite the fact he's a cowardly bully who only loves Olive because her family's rich.
- Vomit Discretion Shot: A seasick Olive Oyl throws up past Popeye's boat's railing during the storm sequence.
