<Tr> <Th> Box office </Th> <Td> $124.6 million </Td> </Tr> <P> Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie is a 2017 American computer - animated superhero comedy film based on the children's novel series of the same name by Dav Pilkey . It was produced by DreamWorks Animation, and Mikros Image Montreal provided animation . It was directed by David Soren from a screenplay by Nicholas Stoller, and stars the voices of Kevin Hart, Ed Helms, Thomas Middleditch, Nick Kroll, Jordan Peele, and Kristen Schaal . The plot follows two imaginative elementary school pranksters named George Beard and Harold Hutchins (voiced by Hart and Middleditch) who hypnotize their mean - spirited principal, Mr. Krupp (voiced by Helms), into thinking he is Captain Underpants, a superhero who fights crime while wearing only underwear and a cape, and the main protagonist of George and Harold's comic books . </P> <P> The film premiered on May 21, 2017, at the Regency Village Theater in Los Angeles, and was released in the United States on June 2, 2017, in 3D and 2D . The film received generally positive reviews from critics and has grossed $124.6 million worldwide against a budget of $38 million, making it the lowest - budgeted computer - animated feature of DreamWorks Animation's history . This was the last DreamWorks Animation film distributed by 20th Century Fox, before Universal Pictures will take over distribution in 2019 with How to Train Your Dragon 3 . </P> <P> In the town of Piqua, Ohio, two fourth - grade friends and next - door neighbors named George Beard and Harold Hutchins are the pranksters at their school, Jerome Horwitz Elementary School . They excessively prank the cruel teachers, with many of these pranks directed at their "evil" principal, Benjamin "Benny" Krupp, putting the two at odds with him . The duo also create comic books about a superhero named Captain Underpants, a character who has superpowers and wears underwear and a cape . They sell these to their schoolmates through a comic company called Treehouse Comix Inc., located in their treehouse . George and Harold's pranks come to an apparent end after they tamper with a toilet invention, the Turbo Toilet 2000, made by the school's local snitch and intellectual, Melvin Sneedley . This causes Krupp to decide to separate the boys and annihilate their friendship . </P>

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