Eddie Murphy’s slapstick banter with sarcastic animals has officially gone the way of Robert Downey Jr.’s Marvel tenure. The Avengers: Endgame star and MCU progenitor is apparently bringing a bit of that dramatic heft to next year’s Dolittle, as evidenced by a new trailer that’s light on quipping beasts and heavy on spectacle.
Following the weekend release of our first Dolittle—yes, Universal dropped the “Dr.”—poster, the many mugging animals were nowhere to be found in Sunday’s first trailer. Set to an even-more-haunted-sounding cover of Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World,” the first footage spares little expense with its CG animals and adventures, but otherwise keeps the creatures mostly mute. In their place, Robert Downey Jr.’s take on the 1920 children’s-book character travels to exotic landscapes to confront the mysterious Rassouli (Antonio Banderas), dodging cannon fire and telling an anxious gorilla (not heard, but voiced by Rami Malek), “It’s okay to be scared.”
The film—which has been in development since 2017—otherwise boasts among its animal cast John Cena as a polar bear, Marion Cotillard as a fox, Ralph Fiennes as a tiger, Selena Gomez as a giraffe, Downey’s Avengers co-star Tom Holland as a dog, Octavia Spencer as a duck, Kumail Nanjiani as an ostrich, Craig Robinson as a mouse, and Emma Thompson as Dolittle’s parrot companion, Polynesia. Traffic screenwriter and Gold director Stephen Gaghan writes and directs the film, which follows Rex Harrison’s 1967 take on the character, and Eddie Murphy’s modern franchise entries in 1998 and 2001.
Dolittle is due out January 17, 2020, having been pushed back from a 2019 perch to avoid competition with both Avengers: Endgame and December’s Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. And who knows? Perhaps the animal cast will feel slightly chattier by the next trailer.