Casting News / Published 2026-10-31

Raye Will Voice a Character and Write the Music for Benny Safdie's Lizard Music

Raye will voice a character and compose original music for Benny Safdie's Lizard Music, a live-action and CGI take on Daniel Pinkwater's 1976 novel, dated for 25 December 2027.

A flat conceptual editorial illustration: a strip of 35mm film running across the frame with six blank frames, sprocket holes top and bottom, and a flat reel disc set in the lower right corner; charcoal and burnt-orange palette, the frames deliberately empty rather than stills. No people, no faces,
Conceptual editorial illustration; not a photograph of the people or event described.

THE SHORT VERSION

  • Deadline reported on 30 October that Raye will voice one of the characters and compose original music for Benny Safdie's Lizard Music, a United Artists live-action and CGI hybrid.
  • Rolling Stone repeated the story the same day and credited Deadline, and both outlets date the adaptation of Daniel Pinkwater's 1976 novel to 25 December 2027.
  • Neither report names the character Raye plays, says how many songs she is writing, or carries a statement from her, from Safdie or from the studio.

Two jobs, not one

Raye has taken two jobs on Benny Safdie's Lizard Music. Deadline, which broke the hiring on 30 October under Justin Kroll's byline, reported that she is coming aboard to voice one of the characters and to compose original music for what the trade calls a United Artists live-action and CGI hybrid. That is a voice part and the score, not one song over the end credits.

Rolling Stone picked the story up the same day with a shorter item that credits Deadline for the news and repeats its phrasing about the blend of live action and CGI. Rolling Stone puts the voice role in its headline and its standfirst, yet its body stays with the music, reporting only that she will create original material for the movie, and the item attributes the arrangement to Deadline rather than to its own reporting. Neither outlet names the character she plays or says how large the part is.

A 1976 novel, a Christmas release

The film is an adaptation. Both outlets trace it to Daniel Pinkwater's 1976 novel of the same name, and Rolling Stone calls Pinkwater a wildly prolific author of children's and young adults' novels, the only description of him that either piece offers. Safdie wrote the screenplay himself. Deadline dates the release to 25 December 2027, and Rolling Stone gives the same day as a theatrical rollout, so the Christmas frame is the one fixed point in either report.

Deadline calls the project a live-action and CGI hybrid, and Rolling Stone says the movie “will blend live action with CGI”. Neither story says how far the animation runs, whether the lizards are wholly digital or partly puppeteered, or which sequences were shot against a volume. No footage has been shown, and no first-look image accompanies either report, so the visual scheme is still a description rather than a look.

The plot both outlets sketch

The story is a boy's night-time detour. In Rolling Stone's summary, the boy finds “a late-night broadcast of lizards playing unearthly music” and then falls in with an old man nicknamed the Chicken Man and a chicken called Claudia. Deadline calls the broadcast secret, says the boy has been left to his own devices, and describes a hidden door swinging open on something extraordinary. Its synopsis ends with the pair on a voyage through invisible worlds, unexpected harmonies and the bond between lost souls, which is as close as either story comes to saying what the music will do in the film.

Deadline is more specific about the pair. It makes the chicken 85 years old and identifies the Chicken Man as Johnson's part, then hands the two a joint arc: kindred spirits who meet at the right moment and set off on what begins as a hunt for a hidden society. Rolling Stone calls Claudia an octogenarian and attaches no actor to the old man in that paragraph, though Johnson heads its cast list.

Johnson at the top of both lists

Johnson anchors the cast on both lists. Deadline names him first as star and producer, and Rolling Stone calls him the star and a producer; the ten names that follow are identical across the two stories: Theo Leber, Alicia Silverstone, Tim Heidecker, Arya Parvathi, Regina Hall, Colman Domingo, Jeff Goldblum, Rachel McAdams, David Krumholtz and Andrew Dice Clay. Rolling Stone's standfirst names only six of them and fills out the list with an open-ended “and more”, so the full eleven-name list sits in the body. Neither piece says which of them voice animated parts and which appear on camera.

Leber is the child lead. Deadline identifies the boy only as Leber, in brackets beside the actor's name, while Rolling Stone spells out that the boy is “named Leber”. The producers named in both pieces are Scott Stuber and Nick Nesbitt for United Artists, Safdie for Out for the Count Productions, Johnson for Seven Bucks Productions and David Koplan for Magnetic Fields Entertainment. No budget, shoot length or start date appears in either report.

The numbers behind the hire

Deadline measures Raye's career for readers who do not follow the charts. It reports 21 Top 40 UK singles and more than 10 billion Spotify streams since her 2014 debut, then lists a record six Brit Awards in a single night in 2024, a first for a woman as Songwriter of the Year, and a Mercury Prize for this year's album, This Music May Contain Hope. The same paragraph notes that the album was her first UK number one.

Rolling Stone adds the awards-season angle. It reports that her single from that album is “considered a major contender for Song of the Year at the upcoming Grammys”, and it dates her next screen job: in May she was cast in Lineage, a London crime feature directed by Yann Demange, which the magazine calls her first scripted dramatic role after an appearance as herself in Netflix's Black Rabbit.

What neither story says

The gaps are the same in both stories. There is no character name for Raye, no count of songs, no word on whether she appears in more than one scene, and no production start date. Neither piece carries a statement from United Artists, from Safdie or from Raye herself; her hiring is reported rather than announced, and neither outlet has spoken to her about it.

The two reports also differ in emphasis. Deadline had the story first and treats the voice role as its headline; Rolling Stone's body leads with the music and mentions the voice work only in the headline and standfirst, so a reader who skims the text would miss half the job. Related coverage on this site includes Florence and the Machine's live album, My Chemical Romance's short film, Noah Kahan's 2027 tour and the BFI London Film Festival winners.

Sources & reporting limits

  1. Raye to Voice Character and Pen Music for Benny Safdie Film Based on 1976 Novel Lizard Music — Rolling Stone
  2. Raye To Compose Original Music And Voice A Character For Benny Safdie's Lizard Music At United Artists — Deadline
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