Colman Domingo, Jeff Goldblum, Rachel McAdams Join Voice Cast of Benny Safdie's 'Lizard Music'

October 17, 2026

Benny Safdie's Lizard Music just got considerably more star-powered in the recording booth. Colman Domingo, Jeff Goldblum, Rachel McAdams and David Krumholtz have joined the voice cast of the live-action/CGI hybrid feature, according to Deadline reporting carried by ABC Audio and Everything Action. The film, from Amazon MGM Studios and United Artists, is in production now and is targeting a theatrical release in 2027. It is one of the stranger and more intriguing titles on the Coming Soon calendar — a children's novel adaptation, directed by one half of the Safdie brothers, headlined in live action by Dwayne Johnson, and now voiced in part by four of the most distinctive performers in the business.

The casting pattern tells you something about the movie Safdie is making. Domingo arrives off back-to-back Academy Award nominations and an Emmy win; Goldblum is a singular screen presence whose voice work has become a franchise of its own; McAdams brings the warmth and precision that made her a defining screen actor of the 2000s and 2010s; and Krumholtz is a character actor's character actor, the kind of hire that signals a production cares about the small roles. None of the four has had a character disclosed yet — Deadline's reporting, as carried by both ABC Audio and Everything Action, leaves the new quartet's roles unnamed — and that mystery is very much in keeping with a source novel built on hidden worlds and secret societies. Readers tracking the film can find it among the Browse catalog's upcoming family and fantasy titles as its release window approaches.

The book, the boy and the Chicken Man

Safdie wrote the script himself, adapting Daniel Pinkwater's 1976 novel Lizard Music, a beloved oddity of children's literature. The story follows a boy, played in the film by Theo Leber, who stumbles onto a secret late-night broadcast: lizards, playing otherworldly music, beamed from somewhere they should not be able to reach. Following the signal pulls him into contact with the Chicken Man — played by Dwayne Johnson — and the Chicken Man's chicken, Claudia. What grows out of that meeting, per the reporting, is a friendship, and a doorway into the novel's hidden worlds and secret societies. It is material that rewards exactly the hybrid form the production has chosen: live action for the boy's ordinary world, CGI for the lizard musicians and the stranger strata underneath it. For more on how the season's family titles are shaping up, see our News desk's ongoing coverage and the release calendar.

The previously announced cast already mixed registers in a way that suggests Safdie is playing the material's strangeness straight rather than sanding it down. Alongside Johnson and Leber, the ensemble includes Alicia Silverstone, Tim Heidecker, Arya Parvathi, Regina Hall and Andrew Dice Clay — a lineup that spans studio comedy, alternative comedy and prestige drama, sometimes within the same surname. Adding Domingo, Goldblum, McAdams and Krumholtz to the voice side deepens that bench considerably, and it gives the film's animated characters — presumably including some of those lizards — performers who can carry music, menace and melancholy in a single line reading.

Behind the camera

The producing team, per Deadline's reporting, is Scott Stuber, Nick Nesbitt, Safdie himself, Johnson and David Koplan. Stuber's presence is notable: the former Netflix film chief has been building a producing slate since leaving the streamer, and a United Artists theatrical title fits that brief. The Amazon MGM Studios and United Artists banners matter here, too. This is not a streaming-first family title being quietly slotted onto a service; the reporting is explicit that the film is targeting theaters in 2027, which puts it in the company of the bigger swings on the 2027 slate and gives exhibitors a genuine original property — no sequel number, no remake label — to sell. You can follow the wider theatrical picture in our movie news coverage and compare it with the week's other casting stories, including the Stillwater casting at Prime Video and Hulu's Durango series order.

For Safdie, Lizard Music is a fascinating pivot. The Safdie brothers built their reputation on nerve-shredding New York pressure cookers, and Benny Safdie's recent acting work has shown the same restless range as his directing. A Pinkwater adaptation — gentle, weird, sincere about a kid and a man and his chicken — is about as far from that reputation as a filmmaker can travel without leaving the planet, and the voice cast he and his producers are assembling suggests the travel is deliberate. Domingo and Goldblum do not sign onto lizard broadcasts by accident. Neither does McAdams, who has been selective about film roles in recent years.

What remains unknown is nearly everything visual: no footage, no character designs and no confirmed release date beyond the 2027 theatrical target have been released, and the new cast members' roles are being kept under wraps. That is normal for a production at this stage, and the drip of casting news is doing its own work — each announcement widens the circle of audiences who will show up for a movie about lizard musicians in 2027 out of sheer curiosity about how this ensemble fits together. Until the first trailer lands, the film sits in the most enjoyable category there is: the one where the cast list alone is the story. Watch this space via our catalog, the free-to-watch hub for related family titles, and the rest of today's entertainment coverage, including Netflix's Canopy creature-feature pickup and the Sense and Sensibility opening weekend numbers.