In his book "Fiasco: A History of Hollywood's Iconic Flops", James Robert Parish said the Popeye musical had its basis in the bidding war for the film adaptation of the Broadway musical "Annie" between the two major studios vying for the rights, Columbia and Paramount. When Robert Evans learned that Paramount had lost the bidding for "Annie", he held an executive meeting with Charles Bluhdorn, head of Paramount’s parent company Gulf + Western, and executives Barry Diller, Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg in which he asked about comic strip characters which the studio held the rights to which could also be used in order to create a movie musical, and one attendee said "Popeye".