Damn, you knew Judd Apatow’s self-written and directed upcoming relationship / stand-up comedian dramedy (now titled “Funny People,”) would probably be rather decent, but man, his cast got just that much better.
Branching out a little past the Apatow family players troupe, the multi-hyphenate has tapped Eric Bana (already rumored), Jason Schwarzman and Jonah Hill to join an ensemble that already contains, Seth Rogen, Leslie Mann and Adam Sandler (man, people must be taking pay cuts to work with Apatow, cause there’s no way a regular comedy of his could afford all these people – this is the rumored way he does business anyhow).
The comedy /drama is filming in mid-September and eyeing a summer 2009 release. Apatow has kept most of the plot details under wraps, but some info has trickled out. We know it’s semi-autobiographical (Sandler and Apatow were both roommates and struggling stand-up comedians at one time), we only recently learned it’s about comedians, it’s apparently “heartbreaking” in spots, and the newest bit of information is that it focuses on a comic who has a “near-death experience.”
Bana may seem like an odd choice, but before he became Mr. dramatic actor Hollywood, the Australian actor was began his career as a stand-up comedian down under (now that seems odd, no?). None of the three newly cast roles have been defined, but our suspicion is Bana will be the main love rival to Leslie Mann (Apatow’s real-life wife, who will play his movie-life wife; or at least she’ll play Sandler’s love interest who we’re pretty sure is the surrogate Apatow in the film) and Hill and Schwartzman will be comedy-circuit stand-ups (good bet, no?)
Can the Apatow gravy train keep going and going? Man, even with a few chinks in the armor (“Drillbit Taylor,” the not-mega, but decent success of ‘Sarah Marshall’), they still seem pretty unbeatable and or at the very least the, ‘let’s get as many projects going as we can before it all falls apart,’ idea is working rather well.