Global Road Entertainment has released the first trailer and poster for their upcoming family comedy Show Dogs. Starring Will Arnett, Chris "Ludacris" Bridges, Natasha Lyonne, Jordin Sparks, Gabriel Iglesias, Shaquille O'Neal, Alan Cumming, and Stanley Tucci, Show Dogs is about the unlikely pairing of a human detective (Arnett) and his canine partner (voice of Chris Ludacris Bridges), who has to go undercover at the world's most exclusive dog show to solve his biggest case yet. Catch it in theaters May 18, 2018!
The new trailer gets right into the heart of the story, with Ludacris revealing through voice over that his canine character Max is a dog cop who is working undercover on a case to retrieve a stolen baby panda. Max and his human partner Frank (Will Arnett) have learned that the thieves are using an elite dog show as a front for an animal smuggling operation. To crack the case, Frank and Max head to Las Vegas, so Max can go undercover as one of the dogs competing in this dog show, but he quickly learns there's a lot more to this world than he thought.
With a lot of help from his new canine friends, Max must transform himself into a "show dog," but it's clear this won't come easy, with one scene showing Max passing some gas while Frank tries to bathe him. We also see a scene where Max deputizes two of his new show dog friends, while the trailer ends with a scene that shows Frank ultimately getting the last laugh, so to speak. As part of his primping and pampering, Natasha Lyonne's Mattie prepares a bikini wax for Max, which Frank delivers himself, stating that this is "payback" for all of his bad behavior. Needless to say, Max isn't too thrilled with the results.
Hopefully this movie doesn't have the same fate as last year's animal-centric movie A Dog's Purpose, which came under fire after a shocking video surfaced that revealed animal abuse. This lead to the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) to call for a boycott of the movie, along with a number of other protests, but the movie still opened as planned last January, and actually fared better than most expected, under the circumstances. The movie earned $64.5 million domestic and $196.3 million worldwide, and while those certainly aren't blockbuster numbers, the movie was produced under a modest $22 million budget.
Raja Gosnell directs Show Dogs, marking his first directorial effort in five years, since the 2013 movie The Smurfs 2. The filmmaker is working from a script by Max Botkin (What Happened To Monday) and Marc Hyman (Meet the Fockers) with Deepak Nayar and Philip von Alvensleben producing. Global Road Entertainment has set a May 18, 2018 release date for Show Dogs, putting it up against 20th Century Fox's Deadpool 2. It falls between Paramount's Action Point, Universal's Breaking In and Warner Bros.' Life of the Party on May 11 and Disney's Solo: A Star Wars Story on May 25. Take a look at the first trailer and poster for Show Dogs, courtesy of Open Road Films YouTube.
