Look At MARMADUKE First Image

The first official still from the upcoming hybrid (mix of CG and live action) MARMADUKE has arrived via USA TODAY, based on the decades-running newspaper comic strip and the characters created by Brad Anderson, about a big dog that lives with the Winslow family and exhibits many out of control characteristics not typically displayed by dogs. If in Marley & Me, Owen Wilson played fetch with a dog, in this movie, Wilson will voice a dog, the lead star MARMADUKE. The article also includes director Tom Dey‘s take on what he thinks this movie would be like, plus view the whole image after the jump…

Dey describes or compares this big screen MARMADUKE to John Hughes‘ film, specifically Ferris Bueller’s Day Out starring Matthew Broderick.
“The dog park is like high school for dogs. To make this kind of movie, you really have to understand that it is the dog’s world and we just live in it.”
“Marmaduke is a teenager, and he’s trying to find his way in the world,”
“It’s a boy-meets-girl story, a coming-of-age and cautionary tale. My job as director is to try to place the audience inside this world.”
The article goes on to explain that one of the tricks that the Great Dane will be able to perform is surfing.
Ok.. so we have Owen Wilson as the lead voice, I think comparing it to a John Hughes movie is a bit of an insult, borderline blasphemy, and last but not least, MARMADUKE will go surfing.
Any of those three initiatives make you want to see this adaptation? I’m still traumatized by those Garfield movies.

The script by Tim Rasmussen and Vince Di Meglio will have MARMADUKE in a “volatile Mutts vs. Pedigrees turf war, woo the purebred of his dreams and overcome a fall from grace.”

Directed by Tom Dey (Failure to Launch) here’s the rest of the cast
Judy Greer plays Debbie Winslow
Lee Pace (TV’s Pushing Daisies) plays Phil Winslow
Amanda Seyfried voices Mazie
Jeremy Piven is Bosco
Ron Perlman plays Chupadogra
Christopher Mintz-Plasse voices Guiseppe
Fergie voices Jezebel.
Steve Coogan voices Raisin
George Lopez is Carlos
Damon Wayans Jr. voices Thunder.

Also starring Emma Stone and William H. Macy

MARMADUKE opens June 4th, 2010