It’s the news you’ve been waiting for all summer and that’s the first signs that 20th Century Fox is indeed moving forward with Alvin and the Chipmunks 4 with the announcement that Mrs. Doubtfire screenwriter Randi Mayem Singer has been hired to write the fourth installment.
20th Century Fox recently moved the sequel to 2011’s Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked back a year and it’s now scheduled for December 16, 2016, giving them a little more than two years to get the movie made.
Combined, the three previous movies, which started with 2007’s Alvin and the Chipmunks, have grossed over $560 million domestically and $1.1 billion worldwide, although the last movie grossed $100 million less in North America than the previous two movies. All the previous movies have received a similar pre-Christmas release.
Nothing is known about the plot for the new movie although it will once again feature the three singing chipmunks, Alvin, Simon and Theodore, created by Ross Bagdasarian, Sr. back in 1958. At this point, it’s unknown whether any of the human cast from the other movies, most notably Jason Lee and David Cross, will be returning, or whether the Chipmunks will be voiced by the same trio as before: Justin Long, Matthew Gray Gubler and Jesse McCartney. (The last installment also starred Obvious Child‘s breakout star Jenny Slate.)
Besides writing Mrs. Doubtfire, Singer also wrote the screenplay for the 2010 Dwayne Johnson comedy Tooth Fairy and has been working on TV for much of her time in between. She also wrote the first draft of the Paul Feig-Reese Witherspoon comedy Wish List, which has since been in rewrites by writers Jonathan Aibel and Glenn Berger, who wrote both of the “Alvin and the Chipmunks” sequels.
