Mark Dindal Tapped to Helm ‘Garfield’ for Alcon

Annie Award-nominated director Mark Dindal (Chicken Little, The Emperor’s New Groove, Cats Don’t Dance) has come on board the new fully-animated Garfield feature underway at Alcon Entertainment. Alcon acquired the rights to the evergreen comic strip property from creator Jim Davis, who is exec producing the project, with the aims of rebooting the franchise.

The new movie is co-written by Paul Kaplan and Mark Togrove. John Cohen (Despicable Me) and Steven P. Wegner (Dolphin Tale 2) are producing with Alcon co-CEOs Broderick Johnson and Andrew Kosove. Bridget McMeel of Amuse is also exec producing with Davis.

The original Garfield comic strip first appeared in 1978, documenting the daily life of a lazy, food-obsessed, cynical and selfish orange cat — as well as his somewhat clueless bachelor owner Jon Arbuckle and dimwitted but loving Odie the dog. Garfield was a near instant hit and is now the most widely syndicated comic strip in the world. It has inspired numerous animated TV specials, the classic 2D series Garfield and Friends (Film Roman), which ran for seven seasons, and popular CG series The Garfield Show (Dargaud Media) — plus the two hybrid movies from and three direct-to-video movies from Fox.

[Source: Deadline]