Thomas Haden Church American Dog
The Spider-Man 3 star talks about the Disney animated movie
(Source: www.scifi.com)
Thomas Haden Church is a man in limbo. Two years ago, he was in getting a career revival by starring in the live-action Sideways, which led to him being cast as Flint Marko AKA Sandman in the upcoming Spider-Man 3.
At the same time, he was approached to appear in a Disney animated movie, written and directed by Chris Sanders. This flick, titled American Dog, possessed a fair amount of buzz since it was Sanders’ follow-up to 2002’s Lilo and Stitch, one of Walt Disney Feature Animation’s few hits in the last ten years.
Here is the original synopsis: “Henry, a famous TV dog, finds himself stranded in the Nevada desert. Out in the world for the first time, Henry's tidy life of scripted triumph has come to an end, and his 2,000 mile trek through the real world is just beginning."
Church was to voice the role of a one-eyed rabbit, who befriends the little brown dog.
"They hired me a couple of years ago, and (we) went through, God, at least a year and a half of them coming to Texas or me going to L.A., and we'd record a bunch of stuff," Church related to Sci-Fi Wire, while promoting Spider-Man 3. "Then in October or November they came to San Antonio, because they really wanted to get some more stuff recorded. The director (Sanders) and producers and writers met me, and I could tell that something was going on, that something had shifted."
That shift was in May of 2006, when Pixar’s John Lasseter became the chief creative officer at Walt Disney Feature Animation. He viewed everything that was in the pipeline at WDFA and made many comments and suggestions. Some of them were constructive: Lasseter asked for several changes to Stephen J. Anderson’s Meet the Robinsons, and the movie was a lot stronger for it.
Unfortunately, Lasseter and Sanders didn’t see eye-to-eye on what they saw in American Dog. Lasseter felt that the star-stranded-in-the-desert plotline was too reminiscent of his recent Pixar blockbuster, Cars. Lasseter wanted something a little less surreal from Sanders, a little more straight-ahead. It should also be mentioned that Lasseter wasn’t a fan of Lilo and Stitch.
Lasseter and Sanders weren’t able to come to an agreement over American Dog. And in that situation, the junior guy is always the one to go. So Sanders was out, and off the Disney lot, and Chris Williams was the new director. Sanders went over to DreamWorks Animation, where he's reworking the John Cleese-penned script for Crood Awakening.
Henry, the central character in American Dog, became Bolt, the crime-fighting star of his own TV show. The gag is that Bolt, now a brown-and-white Alsatian, believes that the TV show is real and that he actually has super powers. And, instead of getting dumped in the Nevada desert, Bolt is tossed onto the mean streets of New York City.
Here was the scenario from Church’s perspective.
"We had a (voice-over) session, they went away," he said. "I went to Pittsburgh to work, and then I didn't hear from anybody for quite a while. Then I talked to Clark, the producer, at the beginning of January and he told me that Lasseter had replaced the director, and they were just starting to completely rewrite the movie. So I used to play a one-eyed rabbit named Buttons. I'm not really sure what I'm playing anymore. I'm kind of kidding. I think the characters are going to remain intact, but the story is shifting. So I'm waiting, waiting for a script to arrive at my ranch."
Will Church ever get that script? So far it seems unlikely. Based on what I’ve heard and read, his character is no longer in the flick (replaced by a confused cat and a hamster in a ball). Actors John Travolta, Woody Harrelson, Bruce Greenwood, Bernie Mac and Mario Cantone have already been cast in the flick. American Dog’s IMDb page lists Chris Williams as the director, but it still has the original synopsis.
American Dog is aiming for a 2008 release. It’s likely to come out in the spring or fall, since the summer of 2008 is likely reserved for Pixar’s latest, Andrew Stanton’s WALL-E.
