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It’s such a good time to celebrate the talents of Kevin Spacey. This month marks the 20th anniversary of the festival premiere of The Usual Suspects, which earned the actor his first Oscar. We recently furthered its accolades by naming it the best movie ever to screen at Sundance. Spacey also just won his first Golden Globe on his eighth try, for his leading role on the series House of Cards. The third season of that show is about to drop on Netflix in a month, too, so that’s exciting.
The guy should be on top of the world, getting more prestige gigs like his role as Richard Nixon in the much-anticipated Elvis & Nixon. But instead, today, we’ve received the news, via The Wrap, that he’s going to play a guy who becomes trapped in the body of a cat.
Of course this movie will be huge, especially when it hits YouTube. Titled Nine Lives, the comedy will be directed by Barry Sonnenfeld (who proved he can handle talking animals in the Men in Black series) and produced by Luc Besson (who just keeps coming up with crazier ideas every year). The plot is somewhere between Disney live-action family classic and bonkers Charlie Kaufman scenario, as Spacey will play a workaholic businessman who gets in an accident and winds up inside his family’s cat.
It’s unclear if this is more of a body-swap deal where the guy has control of the animal’s body and is not just a captive mind-prisoner like John Cusack at the end of Being John Malkovich. Either way, though, we’re likely to hear only his thoughts as voiced by Spacey. It’s a great voice, one I love hearing as the computer in Moon and narrator of documentaries, but this: no.
Spacey is also voicing a villainous businessman in an upcoming DreamWorks Animation feature called Boss Baby, where his rival is an actual baby who is also a businessman (voiced by Alec Baldwin). That project suddenly sounds like one of the actor’s more highbrow projects in the works. Oh well, Spacey has had some clunkers in his time, and he always lands on his feet.
I’d rather see Spacey and friends in a real “Ameowadeus” movie:
