'Dog Man' Fetches A Catfight In Furs Trailer For DreamWorks Animation Film
Bark! 'Dog Man' releases in theaters on January 31
We are officially less than ten days away from the release of DreamWorks Animation’s final film of a very busy year, The Wild Robot, based on Peter Brown’s #1 New York Times bestselling book, on September 27. No matter what trailer packages it may have from theater chain to theater chain, there was no way it was going to head in without a trailer for the studio’s next film. That film, Dog Man, is also a book adaptation, and made with a lot more Peters. Set to be released in theaters on January 31, 2025, the first trailer was released Thursday.
It’s part dog, part man, all hero. Set to Daft Punk’s “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger”, a faithful police dog and his human police officer owner are injured together on the job in a wire-cutting accident, salvaged by a harebrained but life-saving surgery that fuses them together to create Dog Man, sworn to protect and serve… and fetch, sit and roll over. Dog Man embraces his new identity, he becomes a hero to the town. Deep down he seeks the approval of his Chief, voiced by Lil Rel Howery, while also having to foil the pretty evil plots of feline supervillain Petey the Cat, voiced by former Marmaduke Pete Davidson. Petey’s latest has him cloning himself, resulting in the kitten Lil Petey, for more efficient criminal activity. However, Lil Petey forges an unexpected bond with Dog Man, but soon falls into the clutches of a common enemy. Dog Man and Petey reluctantly join forces in urgency to rescue the young kitten. In the process, they discover the power of family (and kittens!) to bring even the most hostile foes together. Dog Man also stars Isla Fisher as TV reporter Sarah Hatoff; iCarly alum Poppy Liu as Petey’s assistant, Butler; Stephen Root as Grampa; Billy Boyd of The Lord of the Rings as Sarah’s cameraman Seamus, and, erg… Ricky Gervais as Flippy the fish. Post-fusion Dog Man is kept a silent character, as is the case in the books.
Dog Man is based on the book series by Dav Pilkey which began in 2016, the year after his final Captain Underpants book Captain Underpants and the Sensational Saga of Sir Stinks-A-Lot was released, but the year before DreamWorks Animation released their Captain Underpants movie, subtitled The First Epic Movie, directed by David Soren. DreamWorks then made an animated series for Netflix that was a loose follow-up, The Epic Tales of Captain Underpants, developed and produced by Peter Hastings, who now directs Dog Man and has a resume that also includes Pinky and the Brain and Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness and The Dragon Knight. Epic Tales ran for 4 seasons, 45 episodes and three specials from 2018 to 2020. To say, this isn’t the first time the studio has dug into the Pilkey well, and like it, the art style is very faithfully recreated. Dog Man as a character and series is the in-universe follow-up to George Beard and Harold Hutchins’s own Captain Underpants comics. The film is produced by Karen Foster, whose resumé at the studio includes Sprit: Untamed, and being co-producer on How to Train Your Dragon.
Having released The Scarlet Shedder in March, the book series is set to release a second book this year, titled Dog Man: Big Jim Begins, on December 3. It is the thirteenth book in the series overall, surpassing Captain Underpants’s total in just eight years. Twenty Thousand Fleas Under The Sea was overall the #1 bestselling children’s book in the United States in 2023. The series has been translated into 45 languages, and sold more than 60 million print copies. It has also spawned its own spinoff, Cat Kid Comic Club, which began in 2020 and has already released five installments through last year.
In the time since the film was dated, Warner Bros. rescheduled Bong Joon-ho’s first film since Parasite, the Robert Pattinson, Steven Yeun, and Mark Ruffalo-starring Mickey 17, to open directly against Dog Man on January 31. Its trailer was also released Tuesday. Watch Dog Man’s below.
