If the current schedule holds, and who f*cking knows at this point, we're a little less than a year away from the arrival of a live-action reimagining of the Clifford the Big Red Dog story.
For those not familiar with the source material, the Clifford franchise began with a series of children's books from writer Norman Bridwell centered on a Labrador retriever. As the title suggests, this dog was red. Also, this dog—who, it's worth noting here, was quite big—carried the name of Clifford.
Here's the literary version of Clifford hanging out with an assortment of other children's book characters over the summer:
On Wednesday, Paramount came through with a first look at the impending live-action take on the character. The film, helmed by Wild Hogs and Old Dogs director Walt Becker, stars Darby Camp as a midd-schooler who receives a (briefly) tiny red puppy from an animal rescuer portrayed by John Cleese, who is nobody's favorite person this week. From there, the tiny red puppy becomes a big red dog, i.e. a hyper-realistic Clifford.
But none of that is shown in the newly released teaser, which is merely a 19-second introduction to how Clifford is going to look in the family comedy also starring Jack Whitehall, Kenan Thompson, Rosie Perez, and Sienna Guillory.
Whether you boast prior Clifford knowledge and/or fondness isn’t important here, however, as you're likely only here for the reactions to the aforementioned teaser. As you may have guessed, the reactions are indeed plentiful and run the gamut from imagining Clifford as a murderous force of arguable evil to simply lamenting the recently popular hyper-realism approach:
Clifford the Big Red Dog is slated for a theatrical release on Nov. 5, 2021 whether you like it or not.
