Stale Popcorn

Back during my Filmrot tenure I used to be able to lay my hands on a lot of screenplays. Upcoming movies, development hell projects and so on and so forth. That’s not been the case these days.

Last month though I finally got the opportunity to read the long in-gestation Will Ferrell ‘comedy project’ Bronzed God.

And you know what? It was some funny, funny shit I have to admit. I’ve read scripts that Will Ferrell has gone on to do and I’ve thought they’ve been atrocious only to see Ferrell turn them in to gold. But this was friggin’ funny as hell on the page so god knows what Ferrell would have done with it.

That’s right, I’m speaking in the past tense because after nigh on a year of procrastinating (only two months ago Ferrell was asked about it and he said it was “on the agenda” and last week it was reported that it was his next project after Brad Sieberling’s Land of the Lost) it’s finally been announced that Ferrell has left the project and, as a result, it’s gone into turnaround.

And when a star attached to a project has just had a big flop (hello Semi-Pro) and he still rejects a movie script with so much “gold”, it gives the script an unnecessary stench that it may not deserve but will undoubtedly mark as a “no go” to getting made elsewhere. Which is a genuine shame because Bronzed God – the story of a passed-his-prime California lifeguard who is the butt of all his younger colleagues jokes and decides to win the heart of his dream girl by entering a championship volleyball game – was an hysterical read and would have made an even funnier movie.

Ferrell’s official announcement is that he’s looking to move away from “movies with sports in them” because Semi-Pro’s poor performance indicated his fans were getting tired of seeing him in “sports comedies”. I can only hope that Ferrell’s unfortunate exit from a project that would have probably given him another iconic character role a la Anchorman, will pave the way for the likes of John C. Reilly, John McGinley, Alec Baldwin, Ethan Surplee, Jeff Bridges, Beau Bridges, Jon Lovitz or any other under-appreciated out-of-shape and/or middle-aged comedic semi-god to step up and revive a potentially superb comedy!

Posted on Thursday, March 20th, 2008 at 11:32 am under Movie News by Gazz.
Tags:Movie News

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