Bill Murray wants more theatre bosses to allow fans to bring their canine companions to screenings of his new movie Isle of Dogs.
Director Wes Anderson's stop-motion animation is set in Japan in a dystopian future, where dogs have been exiled to an island to avoid the spread of canine flu.
The fantasy drama features the voice talents of an all-star cast, including Murray, Edward Norton, Jeff Goldblum, Bryan Cranston, Tilda Swinton, Scarlett Johansson, and Greta Gerwig, and Bill insists it's the perfect picture for cinema-goers to attend with their furry friends.
A handful of dog-friendly screenings have already been organised in the U.S. and U.K., but Murray is urging more theatre owners to seize the opportunity to cash in on the novel idea.
"Isle of Dogs is really good, I gotta tell ya," he said on breakfast show Today. "What I want to happen is I want movie theatres to allow people to bring their dogs into the movie, 'cause they do it (special screenings) in baseball parks and minor leagues (in America) and it's really a lot of fun. I think if people brought their dogs, they'd have a huge audience."
Instead of recording their parts separately, as is common for animated films, the Isle of Dogs cast members holed up in a cabin to work together, and Murray found it fascinating to watch everyone's behaviour gradually evolve as they started to act more and more like their canine characters.
Describing the experience as "a lot of fun", he explained, "We were all in a little cabin, kind of a recording studio, barking at each other. It was fun to watch people deteriorate and become more canine every hour, even though they were drinking coffee and eating donuts, they were becoming more dog-like every few minutes!"
Isle of Dogs, which also features Oscar winner Frances McDormand, Courtney B. Vance, Harvey Keitel, Liev Schreiber, and Ken Watanabe, opens in theatres this week (23Mar18).