Rachel McAdams has joined the voice cast of Benny Safdie’s Lizard Music, adding another recognizable name to a film that is already building out a large ensemble. The move extends the project’s voice roster while leaving one practical question unanswered: which character she will play.
Deadline reported that Colman Domingo, Jeff Goldblum, Rachel McAdams and David Krumholtz have boarded the film in voice roles. For a live-action/CGI hybrid, that kind of cast expansion is not cosmetic; it signals a project being assembled with enough vocal range to carry a hybrid world as much as a live set.
The Chicken Man and the boy
The film already had a clear center in Theo Leber, who plays the boy who stumbles upon a secret late-night broadcast of lizards playing otherworldly music. Dwayne Johnson is set as an eccentric and whimsical old man nicknamed The Chicken Man, giving the story a second anchor alongside the boy’s discovery.
That setup matters because Safdie’s script, drawn from the Daniel Pinkwater novel, depends on contrast: a young character pulled into something strange, and an older figure who can pull the story wider. Adding McAdams to the voice cast gives that structure another layer without changing the basic shape of the project.
Amazon MGM Studios and United Artists
Lizard Music is being developed as a live-action/CGI hybrid film from Amazon MGM Studios and United Artists. The cast also includes Alicia Silverstone, Tim Heidecker, Arya Parvathi, Regina Hall and Andrew Dice Clay, so the voice additions do not arrive in a vacuum; they land in an ensemble that was already getting crowded in the right way.
Scott Stuber, Nick Nesbitt, Benny Safdie, Dwayne Johnson and David Koplan are producing. That puts McAdams inside a package that is already built around named talent on both sides of the camera, which is usually how a hybrid film signals it wants to play beyond a simple novelty pitch.
McAdams role still open
Rachel McAdams is now attached to the project, but the role she will voice has not been specified. That is the one detail buyers, exhibitors and viewers will still be waiting on, because in a voice-driven hybrid film the assignment matters as much as the name on the poster.
For now, the read is straightforward: Safdie’s Lizard Music has moved from a single casting update to a deeper ensemble build, and McAdams is part of the reason the film looks more fully assembled than it did before.
