Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie is a 2017 American animated superhero comedy film based on Dav Pilkey's children's novel series Captain Underpants, produced by DreamWorks Animation and distributed by 20th Century Fox. 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 film was released during the 20th anniversary of the Captain Underpants series. In the film, fourth-grade pranksters George and Harold hypnotize their humorless principal Mr. Krupp into thinking he is a superhero named Captain Underpants. The movie loosely adapts the first, second, fourth, and eleventh Captain Underpants books.

Kevin Darnell Hart is an American comedian and actor. After winning several stand-up comedy competitions, Hart had his first breakthrough when Judd Apatow cast him in a recurring role on the TV series Undeclared (2001). He has since had roles in films such as Paper Soldiers (2002), Scary Movie 3 (2003), Soul Plane (2004), In the Mix (2005), Little Fockers (2010), Think Like a Man (2012), Grudge Match (2013), Ride Along (2014) About Last Night (2014), Get Hard (2015), Central Intelligence (2016), The Secret Life of Pets film franchise (2016–2019), Ride Along 2 (2016), Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie (2017), the Jumanji film franchise (2017–present), and Night School (2018). He also created and starred as a fictionalized version of himself in Real Husbands of Hollywood (2013–2016).