By all accounts, Bill Murray isn’t an easy man to reach and he tends not to get off the couch for just anybody. He’s just as likely to hang out at the local Little League game than actually make a movie, but the actor is reaching far, far back into his Rolodex and re-teaming with an old pal.
Okay trivia buffs, without using IMDB, which movie boasts credits for both Barry Levinson and Bill Murray… give up? It’s “Tootsie.” That’s right, the 1982 classic featured the actor and an uncredited script work from the writer, and now both are pairing up again on “Rock The Kasbah.” Levinson will direct the picture that will see Murray play a burned-out music manager (sounds about right), who takes his sole remaining client on a USO tour in Afghanistan. But somehow, the manager gets left behind, runs into a little girl with an incredible voice, and she follows him to Kabul so she can compete on the reality show “The Afghan Star.” Uh, what?
So why is Murray bothering with this material that sounds like the kind of stuff he’d normally say “no” to? Well, his other old bud Mitch Glazer (“Scrooged“) penned the script (you think Murray might’ve been cautious after appearing in Glazer’s disastrous directorial debut “Passion Play” a few years back). Anyway, the project is headed to Toronto to find some coin and international distributors, and once it does, everything else—shooting dates etc.—will be sorted out. [Deadline]