Universal Dates 'Dog Man' Adaptation As First DreamWorks Animation Film Of 2025

The film continues the studio’s relationship with Dav Pilkey, whose beloved 'Captain Underpants' series preceded ʼDog Man' and was adapted in 2017 into a film and a 2018-2020 Netflix series

Here we go again! Universal Pictures Monday officially announced the Dog Man film from DreamWorks Animation. It adapts the adored book series from author-illustrator Dav Pilkey, who started writing the series after completing his previous series, the also-beloved Captain Underpants books.

Set for release in just about a year on January 31, 2025, the premise is kind of built on the same premise of how Detective Pikachu achieved human speech: when a dog and a police officer are injured together on the job, but instead of psychic powers placing the man inside the dog, they are surgically fused, saving their lives and becoming Dog Man. Half dog, half man, Dog Man is sworn to protect and serve, as long as he isn’t distracted by squirrels. He goes in hot pursuit of his arch-nemesis: the feline supervillain Petey the Cat. Their rivalry is changed forever when Lil Petey, Petey’s precious younger clone, arrives.

The Dog Man book series began in 2016, a year after Pilkey’s final Captain Underpants book Captain Underpants and the Sensational Saga of Sir Stinks-A-Lot. Similarly, Dog Man is the in-universe follow-up to George Beard and Harold Hutchins’s Captain Underpants comics. The Captain Underpants series was previously adapted for Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie, directed by David Soren and released in 2017. That was followed up by an animated series on Netflix The Epic Tales of Captain Underpants, developed and produced by Pinky and the Brain and Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness and The Dragon Knight’s Peter Hastings, who is directing Dog Man. Epic Tales ran for 4 seasons, 45 episodes and three specials from 2018 to 2020.

Just eight years after the first book, Dog Man will be matching Captain Underpants’s twelve with The Scarlet Shedder, releasing in March. The most recently released book, Twenty Thousand Fleas Under The Sea, was released last March. The series has been translated into 45 languages, and sold more than 60 million print copies. It has also spawned its own spinoff, Cat Kid Comic Club, which has already released five installments through last year. The Dog Man film currently has no newly-opening competitors on the release calendar as of writing but that will undoubtedly change as more films are revealed.

Source: Deadline