‘Garfield’ animated series finally moves ahead after 7 years and an Emmy winner will voice the iconic cat
The famously lazy orange cat is crawling back onto TV screens again. After years of whispers, paperwork, and what feels like an eternity in cartoon time, ‘Garfield’ is officially heading back to television with a new animated series ordered by Paramount+. The project is a 2D animated show that brings the sarcastic feline into a fresh chapter, as reported by Deadline. And the voice behind that permanently unimpressed expression? That job goes to Lamorne Morris, the Emmy-winning actor and comedian known for his work on ‘Fargo’. Morris will step into the role of the lasagna-loving cat, bringing a new vocal flavor to a character that has been part of pop culture for decades.
The show is currently going by a very straightforward working title, ‘Garfield’, which honestly feels fitting for a character who has never been one for unnecessary effort. The series comes from Nickelodeon Animation Studios and takes its inspiration from the original comic strip created by Jim Davis. That strip, if you somehow missed the last half-century of newspaper pages and internet memes, revolves around a lazy orange tabby who loves food, avoids work, and keeps his poor owner permanently exasperated. Production on the show is already underway. Behind the scenes, two animation veterans are steering the ship. Dave H. Johnson, whose credits include ‘Middlemost Post’, is attached as an executive producer.
Joining him is John Trabbic III, who has worked on long-running animated staples like ‘SpongeBob SquarePants’ as well as ‘Middlemost Post’. But here’s the funny part: this cartoon has been trying to get made for a very long time. The idea actually started floating around back in 2019. At that point, the company, then known as Viaco,m purchased the rights to the ‘Garfield’ brand from Paws, Inc., the company that manages the character’s intellectual property. The plan was simple: bring the cat into the modern animation lineup and build new shows around him. But, between corporate reshuffling, leadership changes, and two major mergers that eventually shaped the modern Paramount Global structure, the show spent years inching forward behind the scenes.
Eventually, though, the wheels started turning again, and the series is now officially in production. Which means that after roughly seven years of work in various stages, the famous orange troublemaker is finally getting ready for his next TV run. Interestingly, this will be the first new ‘Garfield’ animated series since ‘The Garfield Show’ wrapped up its run in 2016. That series actually began in 2009 and aired for five seasons on networks like Cartoon Network and Boomerang in the United States. During that era, the cat’s voice was handled by longtime voice actor Frank Welker. Meanwhile, no premiere date has been announced yet for the upcoming series. Details are still pretty scarce for the moment.
