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May 24, 2012

Live-action Underdog coming to theaters

by Adam Finley, posted Apr 2nd 2006 3:28PM

underdogMan, I loved watching reruns of Underdog when I was a kid. The fights! The rhyming! Those Native American gopher dudes! Anyway, when I found out they were making a movie based on the beloved cartoon series, I was thrilled. Then I found out it would be done with live actors and not animated. Now I'm not so thrilled anymore. There is one glimmer of hope I have, and that's actor Peter Dinklage (he played Arthur Ramsey on Threshold), who will play the evil villain Simon Bar Sinister. If any actor is deserving of more exposure, I think it's him. His portrayal of a gay wedding planner in The Baxter was brilliant.

As far as Underdog himself, he'll be portrayed by a real dog with a CGI mouth. According to reports, bland flavor-of-the-month Dane Cook may voice the character. Well, if the guy can affect a decent Underdog voice, that's fine, but I'd rather see it go to someone like Billy West who's actually known and respected for his voice work. Sadly, they forgot to cryogenically freeze Wally Cox after his death, so we can't revive him to do this movie. Curse you, modern science.

The film, which is being produced by Disney, begins shooting this month.

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Matt

I'm not at all impressed with anything that I've heard about the impending UNDERDOG feature. It will not succeed to be anything but a failure because they are changing a basic premise of the program. Underdog is a walking, talking anthropomorphic dog who comes from a world populated by both humans and anthropomorphic canines (Underdog/Shoeshine, Sweet Polly, Riff-Raff, and Tap-Tap the Chiseler + The Hunter, The Fox, and The Hunter's nephew, as there is a named character that appeared in both the features). Underdog is not anybody's pet, and transforming him into such will cause the loss of much of what makes the cartoon memorable and, even moreso, workable. April 10th, 2006 will a black day!

April 10 2006 at 12:35 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Toby OB

According to "Wizard", a magazine geared to superhero comics, there'll be a comic book soon which will team up Underdog with Hong Kong Phooey and some dog character named Yukk.

They'll be portrayed as over-the-hill/past their prime and saddled with a lot of personal baggage.

I don't think that's any better than this theatrical release.

For Underdog's voice, why don't they just save some money and use whoever supplied his voice in that Visa (?) superhero commercial from last year's Super Bowl.

Or was that just a lift from an old Wally Cox track?

April 02 2006 at 4:49 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply

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