What do the crankiest, most iconic cat and the heavily Italian-accented video game plumber have in common? Both have the voice of Chris Pratt.
The 42-year-old actor is set to voice legendary lasagna lover Garfield in a new animated movie by Andrew Kosove and Broderick Johnson’s Alcon Entertainment, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
The voice role announcement follows a much-panned one last month, when it was revealed that Pratt would voice Mario in the upcoming “Super Mario Bros.” film.
The upcoming “Garfield” take will tell the story of the eponymous, Monday-hating, anthropomorphized kitty made famous in a 1978 comic co-starring his human, Jon Arbuckle, and the less polarizing animal character of Odie the dog. The hugely popular strip, by Jim Davis, was syndicated across 41 newspapers during its heyday, a high for which it scored the comic syndication world-record.
“Garfield” is set for worldwide release everywhere but China by Sony Pictures. “Finding Nemo” writer and Oscar nominee David Reynolds will write the script, and Mark Dindal of “Chicken Little” will direct. The pair have worked together before on the animated 2000 film “The Emperor’s New Groove.”
The last time Garfield was brought to the silver screen was in 2004, in a combination live-action and animated film, which got a sequel in 2006 with “Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties.” In those adaptations, Bill Murray voiced the starring cat — a far less controversial casting choice, considering Pratt’s recent fallout for the Mario role.
“Danny Devito should’ve been Mario not Chris Pratt, we were robbed,” lamented one critic along with a pic of the Italian-American actor as the mushroom-munching plumber following the September announcement.
“Chris Pratt playing Mario is Italiaphobia and I’m tired of acting like it isn’t,” bemoaned another incensed social media watchdog.
One poster even shared a GIF from “The Sopranos” referencing Silvio Dante’s immortal line: “It’s anti-Italian discrimination.”