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‘The Garfield Movie’ Gave Chris Pratt a Reminder of His Lazy Side

US actor Chris Pratt arrives for the premiere of "The Garfield" movie at the TLC Chinese Theater in Hollywood on May 19, 2024. (AFP)
US actor Chris Pratt arrives for the premiere of "The Garfield" movie at the TLC Chinese Theater in Hollywood on May 19, 2024. (AFP)
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‘The Garfield Movie’ Gave Chris Pratt a Reminder of His Lazy Side

US actor Chris Pratt arrives for the premiere of "The Garfield" movie at the TLC Chinese Theater in Hollywood on May 19, 2024. (AFP)
US actor Chris Pratt arrives for the premiere of "The Garfield" movie at the TLC Chinese Theater in Hollywood on May 19, 2024. (AFP)

Voicing the iconic lazy, orange cat in "The Garfield Movie" reminded Chris Pratt of himself when he was in his late 20s and early 30s.

"I ate so much all the time, and I was very lazy," he told Reuters.

"I never exercised and I ate a whole bunch, and it was great," the "Guardians of the Galaxy" actor added. "So, now I don't have that any longer, but I do have the sense that I'm constantly pampered. So, depending on the season of my life we're talking about, there are similarities in the characters, but I've yet to be all of them all at once."

Pratt humorously noted that his connection to his character became stronger in several ways leading up to his interview.

"I've become Garfield. Look. I've got orange all around me. I was pampered and pet all morning before this interview and now I'm going to eat a big bowl of lasagna," he said.

The famed 1976 comic strip from cartoonist Jim Davis is going from page to animation. Distributed by Sony Pictures, it arrives in US movie theaters on Friday.

The film follows Garfield, a lethargic and greedy orange cat, as he’s snatched away from his pampered lifestyle and forced to carry out a heist for the sake of his alley cat father Vic, voiced by Samuel L. Jackson.

Pratt is no stranger to voicing animated characters following his experience portraying the Italian plumber Mario in the box office success "The Super Mario Bros. Movie" and voicing the elf Barley Lightfoot in Pixar's "Onward."

For the 44-year-old actor, it was easy to take on the role because Dindal, a well-known animation pioneer known for leading hits like "The Emperor's New Groove," already imagined his voice being used for Garfield, making it an effortless fit.

"Mark Dindal (the director) said 'I've been working on this for a couple of years, and I just hear your voice coming out of his mouth. To me, this is Chris Pratt as a cat,’" Pratt said.

Getting approval from Davis, whose comic strip has been published in over 2,000 newspapers and journals around the world, meant a lot to Pratt.

"Yeah, he's the character's creator, and I just heard recently that he gave a sweet quote and rated me a 10 out of 10 as the voice of Garfield," Pratt said.

"I don't think I'd quite realized how much pressure I'd been feeling to get the sign-off from him, and, so, the fact that he felt that way means a lot to me," he added

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Video Game Performers Will Go on Strike Over Artificial Intelligence Concerns 

SAG-AFTRA signage is seen on the side of the headquarters in Los Angeles on Friday, Nov. 10, 2023. (AP)
SAG-AFTRA signage is seen on the side of the headquarters in Los Angeles on Friday, Nov. 10, 2023. (AP)
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Video Game Performers Will Go on Strike Over Artificial Intelligence Concerns 

SAG-AFTRA signage is seen on the side of the headquarters in Los Angeles on Friday, Nov. 10, 2023. (AP)
SAG-AFTRA signage is seen on the side of the headquarters in Los Angeles on Friday, Nov. 10, 2023. (AP)

Hollywood's video game performers announced they would go on strike Thursday, throwing part of the entertainment industry into another work stoppage after talks for a new contract with major game studios broke down over artificial intelligence protections.

The strike — the second for video game voice actors and motion capture performers under the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists — will begin at 12:01 a.m. Friday. The move comes after nearly two years of negotiations with gaming giants, including divisions of Activision, Warner Bros. and Walt Disney Co., over a new interactive media agreement.

SAG-AFTRA negotiators say gains have been made over wages and job safety in the video game contract, but that the two sides remained split over the regulation of generative AI. A spokesperson for the video game producers, Audrey Cooling, said the studios offered AI protections, but SAG-AFTRA’s negotiating committee said that the studios’ definition of who constitutes a "performer" is key to understanding the issue of who would be protected.

"The industry has told us point blank that they do not necessarily consider everyone who is rendering movement performance to be a performer that is covered by the collective bargaining agreement," SAG-AFTRA Chief Contracts Officer Ray Rodriguez said at a news conference Thursday afternoon. He said some physical performances are being treated as "data."

Without guardrails, game companies could train AI to replicate an actor’s voice, or create a digital replica of their likeness without consent or fair compensation, the union said.

"We strike as a matter of last resort. We have given this process absolutely as much time as we responsibly can," Rodriguez told reporters. "We have exhausted the other possibilities, and that is why we’re doing it now."

Cooling said the companies' offer "extends meaningful AI protections."

"We are disappointed the union has chosen to walk away when we are so close to a deal, and we remain prepared to resume negotiations," she said.

Andi Norris, an actor and member of the union's negotiating committee, said that those who do stunt work or creature performances would still be at risk under the game companies' offer.

"The performers who bring their body of work to these games create a whole variety of characters, and all of that work must be covered. Their proposal would carve out anything that doesn’t look and sound identical to me as I sit here, when, in truth, on any given week I am a zombie, I am a soldier, I am a zombie soldier," Norris said. "We cannot and will not accept that a stunt or movement performer giving a full performance on stage next to a voice actor isn’t a performer."

The global video game industry generates well over $100 billion dollars in profit annually, according to game market forecaster Newzoo. The people who design and bring those games to life are the driving force behind that success, SAG-AFTRA said.

Members voted overwhelmingly last year to give leadership the authority to strike. Concerns about how movie studios will use AI helped fuel last year’s film and television strikes by the union, which lasted four months.

The last interactive contract, which expired in November 2022, did not provide protections around AI but secured a bonus compensation structure for voice actors and performance capture artists after an 11-month strike that began in October 2016. That work stoppage marked the first major labor action from SAG-AFTRA following the merger of Hollywood’s two largest actors unions in 2012.

The video game agreement covers more than 2,500 "off-camera (voiceover) performers, on-camera (motion capture, stunt) performers, stunt coordinators, singers, dancers, puppeteers, and background performers," according to the union.

Amid the tense interactive negotiations, SAG-AFTRA created a separate contract in February that covered independent and lower-budget video game projects. The tiered-budget independent interactive media agreement contains some of the protections on AI that video game industry titans have rejected. Games signed to an interim interactive media agreement, tiered-budget independent interactive agreement or interim interactive localization agreement are not part of the strike, the union said.