Hey folks... Robert Downey Jr. announced the cast of THE VOYAGE OF DOCTOR DOLITTLE yesterday. Written and directed by Stephen Gaghan (from an earlier draft by Tom Shepherd), the included poster puts the faces with the characters of the animals Dolittle will talk to. Which is good, because, with this much vocal talent involved, you'd be hard-pressed to pick them out in the din of voices.
(I liked Rex Harrison, but I don't worship his DOCTOR DOLITTLE. I haven't even seen it in 40 years. Even so, I gave those late 90's/early aughts Eddie Murphy films a complete miss, but I'm sure many of you grew up on 'em. Just as the Harrison and Murphy versions, this DOCTOR DOLITTLE will obviously be a kids film, and not-so-much something for the above-ten crowd unless they're bringing kids to see it... so, c'mon, try to relax those 'murdering my childhood' thoughts.)
As you can see by the poster, RDJ is playing Doctor Dolittle, and there's a load of Oscar and Emmy nominees/winners in the bunch playing the animals Dolittle converses with. I am a little terrified-- okay, loads terrified-- of what they'll do with Craig Robinson as a mouse (the juxtaposition of deep-voiced performative blackness against the image of a tiny mouse as a source of humor is worrisome), but many of these really sound good, particularly Ralph Fiennes as a tiger, Octavia Spencer as a duck, Kumail Nanjiani as an ostrich, Tom Holland as a dog, and Emma Thompson as a parrot.
THE VOYAGE OF DOCTOR DOLITTLE is scheduled for release April 12th, 2019. Read all about it here at Deadline Hollywood: http://deadline.com/2018/03/robert-downey-jr-the-voyage-of-doctor-dolittle-rami-malek-kumail-nanjiani-craig-robinson-1202354251/
