You are Sam Rockwell. You're on a potential path to win an Oscar this year for a blistering, controversial performance in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. So what do you decide to do for a future movie? Why, you voice a talking gorilla in a family film called The Once And Only Ivan, of course!
Adapted from Katherine Applegate and illustrator Patricia Castelao's 2011 tome by Mike White, the story follows a silverback gorilla (the titular Ivan), who lives in a cage at the Big Top Mall and Video Arcade. He has grown accustomed to humans watching him through the glass walls of his domain, and rarely misses his life in the jungle. In fact, he hardly ever thinks about it at all. Instead, Ivan thinks about TV shows he's seen and about his friends Stella (Angelina Jolie), an elderly elephant, and Bob, a stray dog. But mostly Ivan thinks about art and how to capture the taste of a mango or the sound of leaves with color and a well-placed line. Then he meets Ruby, a baby elephant taken from her family, and she makes Ivan see their home – and his own art – through new eyes. When Ruby arrives, change comes with her, and it's up to Ivan to make it a change for the better.
Jolie has been spearheading this one as a producer as well as her voice duties, with Me Before You's Thea Sharrock in the director's chair, marshaling a mix of CG and live-action madness, while The Florida Project's Brooklynn Prince is lending her vocal chords to Ruby. The movie has yet to lock down a release date from Disney.
Rockwell will be seen as George W. Bush in Adam McKay's biopic of former vice president Dick Cheney, with the film due out (in the States, at least) for an awards-qualifying run on 14 December.
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