John Requa and Glenn Ficarra are no strangers to wantonly pushing buttons. They broke out in a huge way after “Bad Santa,” which they wrote and Terry Zwigoff directed, turned into a surprise R-rated comedy hit. They quickly followed that up by penning the script for Richard Linklater‘s “Bad News Bears” and then made their directorial debut with “I Love You Phillip Morris,” an outrageous gay romcom starring Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor. While that film is only finally getting released this month in the U.S. thanks to a string of distribution woes this year, the duo soldiered on undeterred and has the Steve Carell-led comedy “Stupid. Crazy. Love.” set to hit next spring. But if you’ve been waiting for the duo to get their “Bad Santa” mojo back, now is your time.
Speaking with the LA Times, the two revealed they are working on a buddy cop picture described as a cross between “Lethal Weapon” and “Bad Santa.” That’s about as much as they were willing to share, but Requa said “we owe one to those people [who loved ‘Santa’]. Since ‘Bad Santa,’ we haven’t written for them.”
The script will be written over the next year, one the writers/directors plan to dedicate solely to writing. Looks like they are taking the time to recharge and get the creative juices flowing again and it will be interesting to see what emerges when they come out on the other side.