In an attempt to adapt every one of my beloved childhood books, Illumination Entertainment’s warpath continues. Their latest conquest? Bringing Clifford the Big Red Dog to the big screen. The production company recently gave us Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax and has plans for The Cat in the Hat, but THR lets us know the details on their latest endeavor.
The company has hired Matt Lopez (The Sorcerer’s Apprentice) to write the script, which would bring Norman Bridwell‘s classic books, following the story of Emily Elizabeth and her 25-foot-tall do, to the feature film format. As someone who read just about every one of these books as a child and holds this one near and dear, my hope is that this project, planning to be a mix of live-action and animated, doesn’t turn out like something similar to Marmaduke.
I wasn’t a fan of their last project, The Lorax, and Illumination’s track record gears heavily towards the children demographic, often producing grating characters and inane jokes. Let’s hope they handle this property with some care and bring out the joy found in these books. Check out a clip of the PBS show below.