Entertainment Weekly has a first look at the Once-ler in the Universal Pictures and Illumination Entertainment adaptation of Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax. In the film he’s voiced by Ed Helms and not a Grinch-like monster as some may have expected.
“Instead, he’s a misguided, fresh-faced young man, whose destructive actions warp not only his world, but eventually himself,” says the magazine.
Illumination CEO Christopher Meledandri added that “The minute you make the Once-ler a monster, you allow the audience to interpret that the problem is caused by somebody who is different from me, and it ceases to be a story that is about all of us. Then it’s a story about, ‘Oh I see, the person who led us into the predicament is not a person. It’s somebody very, very different.’ And so it takes you off the hook.”
You can look at some pics below from both the film and the book. Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax opens in theaters on March 2.
