Marmaduke and Me: Owen Wilson will lend his husky bark to Marmaduke, Fox’s adaptation of the canine comic strip. The film combines live-action and computer animation to tell the story of a family that moves from Kansas to Orange County with their enormous, pain-in-the-ass dog. Once there, Marmaduke meets the purebred of his dreams who he must woo while navigating a fall from grace. This gives Wilson two dog-centric adaptations, leaving him only to tackle Where the Red Fern Grows to achieve an impressive trifecta. [THR]
Family Affair: George Clooney is close to landing the lead in Alexander Payne’s dramedy The Descendants. The Fox Searchlight film focuses on a rich man who takes his two daughters with him to find his wife’s lover in a desperate attempt to keep the family together. The studio hopes the audience will be able to suspend disbelief long enough to accept someone cheating on George Clooney. [Variety]
According to Council: Jim Belushi has teamed up with Diane English and Barry Levinson to shop a legal drama. The series would be based on the lawyer and TV commentator Mickey Sherman, played by Belushi. This shouldn’t be too much a departure for Belushi, whose show According to Jim had the same number of laughs as a drama. Oh! [Variety]
King Ramsay: Fox is giving Gordon Ramsay yet another TV show so he can make people cry. MasterChef will pit nonprofessional chefs against each other in the fight to cook the perfect dish. “This is a huge, nationwide search for the best amateur chef in America,” said executive producer Howard T. Owens. “It’s about people who are lawyers, construction workers and stay-at-home moms but whose real passion is to make great food.” It’ll be interesting to see if Ramsay drops as many f-bombs when yelling at a construction worker as when he’s eviscerating a pastry-chef. [THR]
A Funny Thing: Seventeen-year-old Canadian Keir Gilchrist will play the lead in It’s Kind of a Funny Story, a coming-of-age film starring Zach Galifianakis, Emma Roberts and Viola Davis. The story is about a 16-year-old who checks into a mental health clinic to deal with the rigors of being a teenager. In the clinic he befriends Galifiankis and Roberts, while Davis is a doctor. And with this, the new Michael Cera is born. [THR]
