Last year, Universal Pictures and Illumination Entertainment announced they were joining forces to turn the Dr. Seuss book ,The Lorax, into a 3D CG animated feature. Now the first picture of the title character, which you can see below, has appeared over at USA Today, and they also have more info on the voice cast.
Danny Devito will voice the title character, a tree-loving character who is desperately trying to stop a greedy entrepreneur, called the Once-ter (voiced by The Office and The Hangover’s Ed Helms) from chopping down trees. The other villain has been created specifically for the film, and is called O’Hare, who sells cans of fresh air to the polluted world. He’ll be voiced by Rob Riggle (also seen The Hangover).
Also created for the film is a child hero, called Ted (named after Dr. Seuss himself – Theodore ‘Ted’ Geisel), who goes in search of the Once-ler to find out how the world became so ugly. He’ll be voiced by Zac Efron. Betty White meanwhile will play Ted’s grandmother, who tells him stories of how beautiful the world once was. So yeah, I think it’s fair to say the environmental message will be hammered home quite a lot.
The Lorax is due out in 2012.
