Chris Luckett

Since it became feasible thanks to CGI ten or fifteen years ago, one of the most common trends in family movies has become inserted a CGI animal into a live-action film.

Two of the most notable were Garfield: The Movie and Garfield: A Tail of Two Cities, featuring Bill Murray as the voice of the lethargic cat with a love for lasagna and a disdain of Mondays.

The movies were critically panned and, a decade later, their legacy remains the fact that Bill Murray very publicly tried to get out of his contract to make them. (He signed onto the first movie without looking at the script because he thought the screenwriter, Joel Cohen, was the Oscar-winning director Joel Coen.)

Rotten reviews and legacy notwithstanding, though, both movies made money, so Garfield was never going to be gone for good.

Alcon Entertainment has announced a new Garfield movie is in the works. Unlike the two previous movies, though, the new picture will be entirely animated, similarly to The Peanuts Movie.

The new Garfield will be a fresh start for the character, according to the company, and the foundation for a new franchise of movies.

Worth noting is that Jim Davis, creator of Garfield and the artist behind the comic strip for 38 years now, will be a producer of the upcoming picture. Davis had no involvement in the two Murray-voiced pictures.

While there hasn’t been an official word on the matter, it’s a pretty sure bet Murray won’t be strapping the collar on a third time.

(Source: Variety)