Captain Underpants Debuts His Own Bat-Signal in New Poster

The underwear-clad superhero you never knew you needed will be skidding to the big screen in June — fortunately in animated form rather than live-action. Celebrating the Captain Underpants book series’s 20th anniversary comes the first movie poster and more details about the upcoming film, fully titled Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie.

The poster features a fun riff on the classic Bat-Signal trope that’s invaded so many superhero stories, this time with a detailed outline of some whitey-tighties pressed against a cloudy night sky. The titular hero himself, nary a hair on his portly body, stands boldly atop a building while sporting his namesake underpants with a red cape billowing in the wind. “Change” is indeed coming.

The film stars George Beard (Kevin Hart) and Harold Hutchins (Thomas Middleditch) as a pair of fourth-graders that hypnotize their tyrannical Principal Krupp (Ed Helms) into wearing a curtain as a cape and venturing forth in his underpants to declare himself Earth’s newest hero. No, this isn’t a joke … except it actually is.

The film is based on Dav Pilkeys purposefully ridiculous books, drawn in newspaper comic style and unfolding as a pointedly unserious graphic novel.

The series was initially something of a goof, with the “hero” not having any sort of powers whatsoever and the whole conceit being just a prank the kids played on their jerk of a principal. But 12 books, six spin-offs, an alien invasion or two, and countless fart jokes later, and the character Captain Underpants actually and astonishingly has become something of a hero to low-brow kids across the world.

Look for the fart jokes, action, and “laffs” when Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie slides on into theaters on June 2, 2017.