Garfield is coming back to the silver screen courtesy of Alcon Entertainment which is helmed by Andrew Kosove and Broderick Johnson. This film is set to be released worldwide with the notable exception of China by Sony pictures. The script was penned by David Reynolds the Oscar-nominated writer behind the Pixar classic Finding Nemo. The film is being directed by Mark Dindal who has previously directed the Disney film Chicken Little. These two creatives have also notably worked alongside each other in the past on the Disney film The Emperor’s New Groove.

Garfield is an orange tabby cat owned by John Arbuckle and who shares his home with a dog named Odie. Garfield is characterized as being lazy and mischievous. Garfield was created by Jim Davis and made his debut as a comic character in 41 newspapers in 1978. Since then the comic that bears his name has become the most widely syndicated comic in the world.

Alcon acquired the rights to the Garfield intellectual property from Jim Davis to make this project possible. Davis will serve as an executive producer alongside Bridget McMeel and Craig Sost. The film will be produced by John Cohen, Steven P. Wegner, Kosove, and Johnson. The Animation studio DNEG Animation who recently worked on the film Ron’s Gone Wrong will produce and animate this film.

The producers of this film will be DNEG CEO Namit Malhotra and president Tom Jacomb. Garfield has made his way onto the big screen twice before. The features in question are 2004’s “Garfield” and 2006’s “Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties” both of which are live-action animated hybrid films. These films were both, one, produced by 20th Century Fox and two, included Bill Murray as the voice of the titular cat.

Voicing Garfield this time around is Chris Pratt. Chris Pratt has become well known for his voice acting in recent years being prominently featured in the Lego Movie franchise, Pixar’s Onward, and the yet to be released Super Mario Bros. animated film from Nintendo and Universal.

This article interests me for four main reasons. For one, I’m very interested in the Animation studio DNGE. This because this will only be their second major project. As of now DNGE is most notable for having risen into the spotlight after the closure of the prolific American animation house Blue Sky Studios. Secondly, I’m interested to see how the film in question will go about expanding the Garfield brand. Garfield has had something of a renaissance in recently spawning an online horror based fan community and even being set to appear in the recently released fighting game Nickelodeon Allstars. Thirdly , this article interests me because I’m interested in the cultural ramifications of having Chris Pratt play 2 of the most well known characters of all time in Mario and Garfield. Lastly, It’s just mentioned in passing, but i’m very curious what aspect of this presumably family friendly film has made the creators decide not to release it in China.

Galuppo, Mia. “Chris Pratt to Voice Garfield in New Animated Feature (Exclusive).” The Hollywood Reporter, The Hollywood Reporter, 2 Nov. 2021, https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/chris-pratt-garfield-animated-feature-1235039314/.