Caffeinated Clint
Even if his on-screen career dries up – in other words, if he has a falling out with Ben Stiller down the track – Owen Wilson’s goofy, ebullient voice will see he still gets plenty of work as a voice-over artist. The “Night at the Museum” star lends his lungs to at least one film a year (He’ll soon be heard as Coach Skip in Wes Anderson’s animated “The Fantastic Mr Fox” – which I hear is brilliant, and is attached to again voice Lightning McQueen in a sequel to Disney’s “Cars”) and no doubt, if he wasn’t doing as much funny junk in front of the cameras, we’d be hearing his easily recognizable voice in more toons.
Next year we’ll be seeing Wilson in the third “Meet the Parents” (apparently his character, Kevin, has a much bigger part to play in “Little Fockers” than he did in previous instalments) and, says today’s The Hollywood Reporter, we’ll be ‘hearing’ him as the voice of legendary toon K-9 Marmaduke in the film of the same name.
Fox have been looking for the right voice to bring to life the title character in their CGI/Live-action film (think “Garfield”) for a while now. They’d cast the human actors in the thing – “Pushing Daisies” star Lee Pace; “Love Monkey” babe Judy Greer – a while back.
Tom Dey’s flick follows a family named the Winslows who move from Kansas to Orange County with their dog Marmaduke, a slobbery pooch who creates chaos wherever he goes. William H.Macy is another of the humans in the film, whilst Fergie, Emma Stone, George Lopez, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Steve Coogan, Damon Wayans, Marlon Wayans supply the voices.
Wilson previously worked with director Dey on “Shanghai Noon” (2000) so I assume it was the filmmaker that managed to get Wilson onboard.
