“Humans, for the most part, are dull and blundering. But occasionally, you can be remarkably bright creatures,” says the narrator in the teaser for the upcoming film adaptation of Shelby Van Pelt’s Remarkably Bright Creatures.
Readers of the book will know that the narrator is not actually human, but rather a giant Pacific octopus named Marcellus who forms an unlikely bond with the cleaning lady (Sally Field) at the aquarium where he is housed. Now, Tudum can reveal exclusively that Marcellus will be voiced by Alfred Molina in the film, which streams on Netflix May 8.
Directed by Olivia Newman, Remarkably Bright Creatures follows Tova (Field), a lonely widow who finds joy again when she forms an unlikely bond with a giant Pacific octopus at the aquarium where she works, and a wayward young man, Cameron (Lewis Pullman), who comes to town in search of family. Together, they uncover a mystery that will lead them to a life-changing discovery and restore their sense of wonder.
Van Pelt tells Netflix that the idea for Marcellus came from a YouTube rabbit hole and a fiction-writing exercise that led to the voice of an intelligent octopus stuck in captivity, and that she built the human characters around Marcellus. “One of the places where I was able to find a really good character was on YouTube, watching videos of naughty octopuses that were escaping from their enclosures, or just getting up to antics in aquariums,” she says. “I remember thinking that would be such a fun voice to write, such a fun character to harness. The character of Marcellus came out of a little vignette that I wrote in a continuing education class.”
Of course, Marcellus needed human characters to ground the story in the real world, which is where Tova — based on Van Pelt’s own maternal grandmother — and Cameron — inspired by events throughout the author’s life — came in to play. “Beyond Marcellus, Remarkably Bright Creatures is a story of love and grief,” Van Pelt says. “Those are two emotions that everyone who walks this planet feels at some point, so the themes are very widely resonant. There’s just a wide range of ages and generations and characters that people can enjoy together.”
Remarkably Bright Creatures debuts May 8 on Netflix.
