fun fact, sam and max creator steve purcell works at pixar now. pixar could make a sam and max movie, and it would be glorious.

Yes. He created the characters in the 1980s for a comic book first, then he licensed out the characters to LucasArts in the 90s for the “Hit the Road” adventure game and the cartoon series, but the license LucasArts had with the series expired in 2005.

Purcell then licensed out the Sam and Max IP to Telltale for their trilogy of adventure games starring the characters, but Purcell still owns the characters themselves (Telltale doesn’t actually own much original properties, they make a living mainly developing episodic point-and-click adventure games and story-driven titles based on licenses they are able to to acquire from other sources, be it movie properties like Back to the Future and Jurassic Park, or other properties like The Walking Dead, Game of Thrones, and Borderlands).