Variety is reporting that the Walt Disney Company plans to begin shooting a live action Underdog film in Vancouver in January.  The movie is based on the Underdog cartoon series, which debuted on NBC in 1964 and lasted nine years managing to parody just about every superhero cliche in the process.  Disney hopes the film, which, unlike the Scooby-Doo features will use a real dog to play the eponymous canine superhero, can become a franchise.

The script for the proposed Underdog film written by Joe Piscatella and Craig A. Williams has kept the main characters from the original series including Underdog's alter ego, the mild-mannered beagle Shoeshine, his constantly endangered girlfriend, Sweet Polly Purebred, and his would-be nemesis, the evil scientist, Simon Barsinister.