‘Pearls Before Swine’ Comic Creator In Movie Deal Talks

For those who haven’t had the pleasure of reading “Pearls Before Swine,” we point you here. For those with link fatigue (or if you’re “reading” this on your talking Kindle), we describe the popular comic strip as Itchy and Scratchy meets Garfield with a dollop of postmodern storytelling (see ya, fourth wall!). An inarticulate fraternity of crocodiles is also involved. Today Galleycat, our bookish brother blog, reports that “Pearls Before Swine” creator Stephan Pastis has begun talks with an unnamed studio to bring his syndicated strip to the silver screen in an animated feature.

Pastis, who we know from his blog has won at least one posture competition, also spoke with Galleycat about the work of assembling his eleventh comics collection, The Saturday Evening Pearls, out this month from Andrews McMeel. “It’s a lot of work, because in addition to doing the covers, I write comments below many of the individual strips,” he explained. “The comments involve what I may have liked/not liked about the strip, feedback I got from readers, mistakes, etc. The comments take a fair amount of time, but they seem to be readers’ favorite part of the book.” As for what’s next in the world of comics in these days of dying newspapers, Pastis believes that “the future will involve getting animated in some capacity and distributed on the Internet.”

Launch a social media campaign that will build your brand and deliver results in our online Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting June 7. Speakers include Abigail Cusick (Bravo Digital), Gregory Galant (Sawhorse Media), Alex Leo (Thomson Reuters Digital), Jim Tobin (Ignite Social Media), and many more. Read the reviews.