Alvin and the Chipmunks are returning to screens, with a digital-first relaunch this year and a theatrical film targeted for late 2028, timed to the franchise’s 70th anniversary.
Big Shot Pictures, the family-entertainment studio launched in January 2026 by former Paramount Pictures co-CEO and Nickelodeon chief Brian Robbins, has taken a 25 percent stake in the franchise through a joint venture with Bagdasarian Productions. The Wall Street Journal broke the news on July 14, with The Hollywood Reporter and other trades following.
The remaining 75 percent stays with Ross Bagdasarian Jr. and his wife, Janice Karman, who have run the property since the late 1970s and have held it in the family since 1972. Control was not sold.
“We have guarded nearly seven decades of Chipmunk content, waiting for the right opportunity,” the couple said in a joint statement. “Working with Brian and the incredible team he has assembled made this the perfect collaboration.”
The rollout starts with short-form content on YouTube and TikTok later this year, casting Alvin, Simon, and Theodore as social-media personalities who react to cultural moments and cover popular songs. “It’s about having the Chipmunks really playing into the zeitgeist and trying to live in real time with pop culture,” Robbins told the Journal. No director or cast has been announced, though Big Shot’s theatrical projects fall under a first-look distribution agreement with Sony Pictures Entertainment.
The characters were created by Ross Bagdasarian Sr., born Rostom Sipan Bagdasarian in Fresno in 1919 to Armenian immigrant parents from the Ottoman Empire. Like many Armenians in the San Joaquin Valley, his father was a grape farmer. He performed under the stage name David Seville.
Before the Chipmunks, he wrote “Come On-a My House” with his first cousin, the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer William Saroyan. The two composed it in the summer of 1939 while driving across New Mexico, building the melody on an Armenian folk song and the lyrics on Armenian customs of hospitality. Rosemary Clooney’s 1951 recording sold roughly 750,000 copies in a month and spent six weeks at number one, launching her career. Bagdasarian had made his Broadway debut in 1939 as the newsboy in Saroyan’s “The Time of Your Life,” and later appeared in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rear Window.”
The Chipmunks came out of a $200 tape recorder, bought with what was reportedly the last of the family’s savings. Bagdasarian found that speeding up playback produced high, comic voices, and used the technique on his 1958 number one “Witch Doctor,” which pulled Liberty Records back from the edge of bankruptcy. When Liberty asked for a follow-up, he created three singing chipmunks and named them, as an inside joke, after label executives: Alvin for president Al Bennett, Simon for founder Si Waronker, and Theodore for engineer Ted Keep.
“The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don’t Be Late)” was recorded on Halloween 1958 and released two weeks later. It sold more than 2.5 million copies in three weeks, topped the Billboard Hot 100, and won three awards at the first Grammy ceremony on May 4, 1959: Best Comedy Performance, Best Recording for Children, and Best Engineered Record. It remained the only Christmas song ever to reach number one on the Hot 100 until Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” did so in 2019.
Bagdasarian brought the characters to television as producer and director of “The Alvin Show,” which aired on CBS from 1961 to 1962.
Ross Bagdasarian Sr. passed away in 1972, leaving the franchise to his family. His son, then a recent law graduate, revived the property with Karman in the late 1970s. The revival ran through the NBC animated series in the 1980s, the four Fox live-action films between 2007 and 2015, and Nickelodeon’s “ALVINNN!!! and the Chipmunks,” which ran until 2023. The Fox films grossed roughly 1.4 billion dollars worldwide. Bagdasarian Jr. voices Alvin, Simon, and Dave Seville; Karman voices Theodore and the Chipettes.
