We probably don’t need to tell you about our admiration for Aubrey Plaza, and we’re glad to see the actress rightfully getting her due with the lead role in the upcoming “The Hand Job” featuring a wealth of comedic talent. But another project, also featuring Plaza, will mount first and she’s joined once again with some strong players at her side.
Aubrey Plaza, Jake Johnson (the on-the-rise actor who stole scenes in both “Ceremony” and “No Strings Attached“) and indie veteran Mark Duplass are set to star in the comedy “Safety Not Guaranteed.” The film, written by Derek Connolly, is based on the quirky real-life incident where a man took out a very serious classified ad seeking a companion for time travel, gravely intoning that you must bring your own weapons and warning “safety not guaranteed”; it spawned an Internet meme. The story is centered around Plaza’s character and we recently spoke with Jake Johnson, who filled us in a little more on the film.
“It’s the story of my character who is a writer for a magazine in Seattle that decides to go….and get an interview with this guy and make fun of him a little bit. And I bring one of my interns, who’s Aubrey, and it’s kind of her story, meeting this guy and this guy’s effect on us and it turns into its own little world,” Johnson explained. “And Mark plays the guy from the classified ad.”
As we reported yesterday, Jeff Garlin, Kristen Bell and Mary Lynn Rajskub are all among the cast, along with “Humpday” director Lynn Shelton, Jenica Bergere and Karan Soni; not a bad cast, all in all.
Production is set to begin next month with hot screenwriter Colin Trevorrow (whose sci-fi spec script “World War X” was snatched up by Warner Bros. last summer) making his featuring debut on the indie movie and the Duplass brothers behind him producing the picture. It’s some pretty great casting all around, and features a really inspired concept, so we’re eager to see how it all comes together.