Dreamworks Animation has optioned Berkeley (Bloom County) Breathed’s Flawed Dogs for an animated feature film. Flawed Dogs is the saga of a less-than-perfect dachshund who has to reclaim his place in the family after he has been exiled due the machinations of a jealous and physically perfect show dog.

 

Breathed published his first Flawed Dogs volume, Flawed Dogs: The Year-End Leftovers at the Piddleton Dog Pound in 2004, and followed up  with Flawed Dogs: The Novel: The Shocking Raid on Westminster, a 208-page illustrated saga that appears to be the basis for the Dreamworks movie as described by Variety.  Breathed’s precisely-rendered illustrations for his Flawed Dogs books are often surreal in their exaggerated depiction of canine flaws and are reminiscent of something that might have been produced by Salvador Dali, had the mustachioed artist been obsessed with dogs. With the increasing visual capability of Dreamworks Animation, which is evident the lush and lavish Kung Fu Panda movies, Flawed Dogs just might turn out to be the most visually stunning film the studio has created.

 

For Berkeley Breathed the optioning of Flawed Dogs is further proof that there is life after comic strips. On March 11th the motion capture animated version of Breathed’s Mars Needs Moms will debut from Disney (see “Breathed Book Gets MoCap Treatment”).