If you’re a giant movie studio, and you’ve nearly exhausted the world’s catalog of superhero comics and graphic novels, toys from the 1980s and board games, where do you turn for built-in name recognition and established fanbases?  The funny pages.

Deadline reports that 20th Century Fox and Walden Media have jointly acquired the rights to Bil Keane’s syndicated comic strip “The Family Circus,” with plans of creating a live action, multiple quadrant, family franchise.  In fact, the studio has already hired Bob Hilgenberg and Rob Muir to pen the script, and John Baldecchi and Stacy Maes to produce.

Keane started the strip in 1960 and still produces the single-panel strip with his son Jeff to this day.  According to King Features, “The Family Circus” is the most widely syndicated comic strip in the world.

The popular comic strip has long been coveted by studios but Keane never had much interest in selling the film rights.  It wasn’t until producer Baldecchi tracked him down after a two year search and managed to convince the father-son team that now was the time to sell.

Fox and Walden, which are working together on the forthcoming  ”The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader,” won a fierce bidding war with a number of studios reportedly striking a deal of six figures against seven figures.