Now, let’s not get too excited at the news coming out of CinemaCon that Trey Parker will be voicing the villain in DESPICABLE ME 3, which would make it the first significant role in a project directed by someone other than himself since BASEKETBALL.
You know why we shouldn’t get too excited? Because I remember not so long ago that Al Pacino was set to make DESPICABLE ME 2 his big animated voice-over debut. His name even made it on the early trailers, and it was like “Oh, shit! Al Pacino’s gonna be part of this thing!” Cut to like a month before the release date, and they overdub his role with Benjamin Bratt. Maybe it was for the best, considering that the role was that of a Mexican-American, not an Italian, and that Bratt’s work was easily the best thing about that sequel, but I’m just saying that they seemed mighty sure that Al Pacino was going to be in the movie, and it turned out that he wasn’t. And Trey Parker, for the past 20 years, has had even more autonomy than Al Pacino.
Having said that, I’m really, really excited at the prospect of Trey performing in something other than SOUTH PARK for the first time since TEAM AMERICA: WORLD POLICE, and for the first time without Matt Stone in…maybe forever. There’s no doubt that he saw something in the gig, considering that he absolutely does not need it and has shown a reluctance towards appearing in Hollywood projects post-BASEKETBALL, and when you think about all the iconic characters he voices on SOUTH PARK (including Cartman, Mr. Garrison, Randy Marsh, Mr. Mackey, and Satan), it’s obvious that the sky’s the limit on what he can bring to the table, provided they let him.
Wouldn’t expect anyone to get called a donkey-raping shit-eater or anything though.
