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The 5-foot-2 actress has landed the lead voice role in DreamWorks Animation's next computer-generated cartoon, Monsters vs. Aliens, playing a giant in the spoof of '50s sci-fi flicks, the studio announced Tuesday. "I got very inspired when the studio showed me storyboards," the actress told USA Today from ShoWest, the annual film exhibitors confab in Las Vegas. "Playing a larger-than-life woman has given me my own opportunity to make tall jokes." Witherspoon leads an all-star cast in the would-be blockbuster, voicing the role of Susan Murphy, a California girl who gets hit by a meteor on her wedding day and mysteriously grows into the 49-foot freak who becomes known as Ginormica. Also on board: Knocked Up's Seth Rogen as B.O.B., an indestructible goo akin to the big-screen Blob; Stephen Colbert, who's taking time out from his Tek Jansen animated adventures to play—aptly enough—the president of the United States (looks like Colbert's campaign was a success, after all); Arrested Development's Will Arnett will play the macho half-ape, half-fish Missing Link; House's Hugh Laurie is set for the insect-headed Dr. Cockroach; The Office's Rainn Wilson has signed on to play the evil alien Gallaxhar; 24's Kiefer Sutherland will be General W.R. Monger; and Rogen's Knocked Up costar Paul Rudd plays Susan's fiancé, Derek. Ginormica is captured by the military and held in a secret government prison along with various other "monsters" deemed a threat to society. That is, until a mysterious alien robot makes a landing and starts wreaking havoc (à la The Day the Earth Stool Still). General Monger then unleahses the monsters to fight the aliens and save the planet. Codirected by Rob Letterman (Shark Tale) and Conrad Vernon (Shrek 2), Monsters vs. Aliens is due out Mar. 27, 2009. It will also be the first film DreamWorks plans to unleash in its Ultimate 3-D format, which it recently developed in-house. At the ShoWest convention, DreamWorks Animation honcho Jeffrey Katzenberg sounded downright giddy over the eye-popping technology powering the film. "It is nothing less than the greatest innovation that has happened for all of us in the movie business since the advent of color 70 years ago," he gushed during an address to exhibitors. "Now it's our chance to deliver something that is far superior than anything that can be done in the home." Katzenberg previewed a clip from Monsters vs. Aliens featuring an attack by the U.S military on a space ship while the president fired a pistol and yelled, "I'm a brave president!" Independence Day-style. Audiences will still have to sport funky 3-D specs, but Katzenberg claimed that unlike the old-school 3-D, no one will be going cross-eyed from the new process. More than 10,000 theater screens will be equipped in the next three years with digital 3-D systems, after a company called Acess Integrated Technologies announced a deal Tuesday with 20th Century Fox, Disney, Paramount and Universal. So far, only about 4,600 of the 38,000 screens in North America are digital. However, the move to 3-D will have one negative impact on moviegoers: higher ticket prices. The new dimensionalization process increased the Monsters vs. Aliens budget by at least $15 million, but Katzenberg noted that audiences will gladly fork over a few more bucks for a "premium experience." Indeed, filmgoers shelled out more for the live-action 3-D Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert Tour, which broke records at the box office, grossing $61 million in limited release. But Monsters vs. Aliens isn't the only 3-D adventure in the pipeline. Over the next two years, several studios have such films in the works, including New Line's Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D; James Cameron's highly anticipated sci-fi epic Avatar, for 20th Century Fox; DreamWorks Animation's How to Train Your Dragon (which was pushed to spring 2010 to avoid competing for screens with Avatar); and Disney's Toy Story 3, which will be accompanied by rereleases of the first two Toy Story movies in 3-D. |
