Ask Empire which 30 Rock character is its favourite, and we’ll look you straight in the eye and tell you: Tina Fey’s Liz Lemon. Ask us again five minutes later and we’ll say: Alec Baldwin’s Jack Donaghy. Five minutes after that, we’ll say Tracy Morgan’s Tracy Jordan. It’s such a great show, you see, that we can’t make up our minds. Darn it!
But really, if it came down to it, if our lives depended on it, if we had to put our hand on a Bible and somehow ignore the third-degree burns, we’d have to say that our favourite 30 Rock character is…
Kenneth The Page. As played by the wonderful Jack McBrayer, Kenneth is a towering colossus of comedic naivete, apple pie wholesomeness, creepy religiosity and gleaming white teeth. He’s the show’s secret weapon – and so we were delighted to see McBrayer show up in this year’s Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Dammit, the man deserves a top movie career.
And that’s a call he’s clearly keen to heed, judging by the news that he’s signed on to star in a sequel to Cats And Dogs, entitled Cats And Dogs: The Revenge Of Kitty Galore.
Erm, yes, you did read that right: there’s a sequel to the underwhelming 2001 comedy in which cats and dogs – voiced by celebrity talent, of course – did battle for control of the world. Or something. We can’t remember much about it except the awesome trailer.
Yet, clearly it did well enough to warrant a sequel, albeit some years down the line, and McBrayer and Chris O’Donnell (remember him?) have signed on as the human leads. The voice talent has yet to be cast, so we’re not sure if the likes of Tobey Maguire, Sean Hayes (who was in 30 Rock, funnily enough) and Alec Baldwin (hey, wait a minute…!) will return.
But you never know. For this isn’t a straight-to-DVD jobby. At least, not that we’re aware of. Warner Bros. and Village Roadshow are throwing their considerable combined weight behind the movie, and Ron Friedman and Steve Bencich, writers who specialise in talking animals (they wrote Brother Bear, Chicken Little and Open Season), will be hoping to knock this one out of the park.
Brad Peyton will make his directorial debut on the movie, which will be a blend of live-action and CGI, like the original. Filming has already begun in Vancouver.