Disney+ Adding Hit Non-Disney Family Movie This Weekend

There’s even more new content heading to DIsney+. On July 30, the streaming service will add the 2004 film Garfield. The movie, which was a mix of live-action and animation, featured Bill Murray voicing the iconic character. While it was no originally not a Disney movie, 20th Century Fox made it. Disney now owns 20th Century Fox’s assets, meaning this version of Garfield can now be on the same service as Mickey Mouse.

On the official Disney+ website, they shared that Garfield will be available to stream on July 30. The film, which was released in 2004, was live-action. But, Murray voiced the title character, who was digitally rendered for the movie. In addition to Murray, the cast includes Jennifer Love Hewitt, Breckin Meyer and Stephen Tobolowsky. The plot revolves around how Meyer’s character, Jon, adopts a dog named Odie in order to impress veterinarian Liz, played by Hewitt. However, Garfield doesn’t appreciate the newest member of the household. During the film, Garfield locks Odie out of the house. The dog subsequently runs away and is dog-napped, leading to Garfield going on a mission to rescue him. Garfield was written by Joel Cohen and Alec Sokolow and directed by Peter Hewitt.

Years after Murray voiced the main character in Garfield, he recounted how he originally joined the project. Back in 2014, the actor took part in a chat with fans over Reddit, per Insider. Murray shared the backstory of how he joined Garfield, noting that he agreed to voice the title character after mixing up Cohen, who wrote Garfield, and writer-director Joel Coen, who has worked on projects like Burn After Reading and Fargo.

“I had a hilarious experience with Garfield. I only read a few pages of it, and I kind of wanted to do a cartoon movie, because I had looked at the screenplay and it said “Joel Cohen” on it,” Murray recalled. “And I wasn’t thinking clearly, but it was spelled Cohen, not Coen.” The Lost in Translation star went on to say that he is a fan of the Coen brothers’ work and thought that Joel, in particular, was a “wonderful comedic mind.” Murray also said that the filming process wasn’t the easiest, as he recorded his lines after the live footage had been shot. At one point, he voiced his concerns over the film’s script, and the “misspelled Joel Cohen” was there to hear it. In the end, it worked out, but Murray added, “And we managed to fix it, sort of. It was a big financial success. And I said, ‘Just promise me, you’ll never do that again.’ That you’ll never shoot the footage without telling me.”