Chris Pratt is the new voice of Garfield.
Pratt has been cast to lend his pipes to the lasagna-loving and Monday-hating feline character Garfield in a new animated movie from Sony Pictures and Alcon Entertainment’s Andrew Kosove and Broderick Johnson.
Garfield will be directed by Mark Dindal (Chicken Little) from a script penned by Oscar-nominated writer David Reynolds (Finding Nemo). Garfield reunites Dindal and Reynolds who previously worked together on the Disney flick The Emperor’s New Groove, which was released back in 2000.
Created by Jim Davis, Garfield made his first appearance in comics sections back in 1978. Garfield’s eponymous comic strip chronicles his life in Muncie, Indiana, together with his human owner Jon Arbuckle and his best friend beagle Odie. As of 2013, Garfield was syndicated in roughly 2,580 newspapers and journals, and held the Guinness World Record for being the world’s most widely syndicated comic strip.
Alcon Entertainment obtained the rights to Garfield from Davis, who will serve as an executive producer on the movie. Bridget McMeel and Craig Sost are also exec producing the film, with Steven P. Wegner producing alongside Kosove and Johnson.
The animation for Garfield will be provided by DNEG Animation, which previously worked on the recently released animated film Ron’s Gone Wrong from 20th Century Studios. DNEG CEO Namit Malhotra and DNEG CEO president Tom Jacomb will also serve as producers on the film.
Aside from announcing Pratt’s casting, Sony Pictures and Alcon Entertainment also unveiled a first-look photo of Pratt’s Garfield on Monday. The image, which can be seen below, shows the lazy orange tabby cat posing with his arms crossed while giving his signature smirk.
A full look at the new #Garfield https://t.co/AtVyLeBABs pic.twitter.com/oP6v2CHmWr
— The Hollywood Reporter (@THR) November 1, 2021
Fans last saw Garfield on the big screen in the 2004 live-action/animated hybrid film Garfield and in its 2006 sequel Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties. Garfield was voiced by Bill Murray in both films produced by 20th Century Fox.
Pratt is no stranger to voice work. Pratt voiced Emmet Brickowski in 2014’s The Lego Movie and its 2019 sequel The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part. The actor also voiced Barley Lightfoot in the 2020 Disney Pixar film Onward, and is also set to voice Mario in the yet-to-be-titled Super Mario Bros. animated feature from Universal and Nintendo.
On the live-action side, Pratt was most recently seen as Dan Forester in Amazon’s sci-fi feature The Tomorrow War. He will be next seen reprising his role as Owen Grady in Jurassic World: Dominion, which is scheduled to hit theaters on June 10th, 2022. He will also return as Peter Quill, aka Star-Lord, in Thor: Love and Thunder, which is currently set for a July 8th, 2022 theatrical release.