Frances McDormand To Voice The Villain In Madagascar 3

For the life of me I can't understand why we don't see more of Frances McDormand. The woman is a phenomenal actress, and an Oscar winning one at that, yet she hasn't been in a film since 2008's Coen brother's film Burn After Reading (in which she was a scream). Lucky for us, 2011 brings Ms. McDormand back into our lives with two roles, one in the upcoming Transformers sequel and another in the dark drama This Must Be The Place with Sean Penn. She's apparently trying to stick around this time, however, as she has just landed another role, although for this one we will only be hearing her voice.

THR reports that McDormand will not only be lending her voice to the next film in Dreamworks' Madagascar series, but that she will be playing the role of the villain in the film. Unlike Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, David Schwimmer and Jada Pinkett Smith, who are returning for the sequel and voice animal characters, McDormand will be playing a human - "a calculating and goal-oriented animal control officer who leads her team to capture the animals." In the film, directed by Eric Darnell, the group tries to find its way back home by joining a traveling circus.

To me, the most surprising part of this story is that Frances McDormand has never done voice-over work for an animated film before. While it isn't her normal voice, I can't even hear the word "Minnesota" without thinking about the actress' accent in Fargo. Maybe this will open up a whole new career path that will ensure that we get more and more McDormand in the years to come. We can only hope so.

Eric Eisenberg
Assistant Managing Editor

Eric Eisenberg is the Assistant Managing Editor at CinemaBlend. After graduating Boston University and earning a bachelor’s degree in journalism, he took a part-time job as a staff writer for CinemaBlend, and after six months was offered the opportunity to move to Los Angeles and take on a newly created West Coast Editor position. Over a decade later, he's continuing to advance his interests and expertise. In addition to conducting filmmaker interviews and contributing to the news and feature content of the site, Eric also oversees the Movie Reviews section, writes the the weekend box office report (published Sundays), and is the site's resident Stephen King expert. He has two King-related columns.