Snoopy's in love

US director Steve Martino appears at a media event in Beijing to promote his latest animated production,The Peanuts Movie. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Since the American cartoonist Charles M. Schulz created Snoopy in 1950, the naughty boy-like dog has influenced several generations and has become a cultural icon in the United States.

At the peak of its popularity, the Peanuts' strips were serialized in more than 2,600 newspapers, with a readership of 355 million in 75 countries.

On April 9, 1965, Time magazine selected Snoopy and his human friends－Charlie Brown, Linus, Schroeder and Lucy－to feature on the cover.

Then in 1969, the Apollo 10 crew named the lunar module "'Snoopy" and labeled the Apollo command module "Charlie Brown".

For most Chinese adults, the earliest memory of the black-and-white beagle may be traced back to early 1980.

Though the last cinematic adaptation was released around 35 years ago, Snoopy still commands high recognition thanks to his image's wide use on spin-off products, such as toys, costumes and school stationery.

Snoopy's micro blog is followed by nearly 350,000 fans on Sina Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter. On the country's largest online platform, Baidu Tieba, up to 77,200 comments can been traced on a forum named after the puppy.

To stay faithful to Snoopy and the Peanuts gang was a big challenge to Martino and his team.

"When I first talked with the Schulz family, one of their main intentions was to keep Schulz' legacy alive for a new generation," Martino tells China Daily.

"I always wanted to look around Charlie Brown and Snoopy's world when I was a kid ... and I really hope Chinese audiences will go into Charlie Brown and his dog's world and take it as real," says the director, who received his first Snoopy-related gift when he was 6.