In an interview with the actor for this summer’s “Get Him To The Greek,” Jonah Hill has taken to discussing his much-buzzed, comedy-super-group collaboration on “The Adventurer’s Handbook” to be helmed by Akiva Schaffer of Lonely Island fame.
“The next movie I’m shooting, I wrote and it’s me and Jason Schwartzman and Jason Segel called ‘The Adventurer’s Handbook’ for Universal,” Hill explains to Collider, in a great detailed interview. “It’s cool. It’s really exciting. This is the first movie that I think I have real writing credit on that’s getting made into a movie. It’s me and Segel and Schwartzman basically in like ‘Indiana Jones’ or ‘Goonies’. Our point of views are very grounded but it’s basically like an ’80s adventure movie.”
“We basically go on this adventure together and immediately get chased by drug dealers around the world. We find this handbook that we think is very special that has a map to this sacred island on it. We’re going to find the island because we’re all bored with our lives and then mayhem ensues. I lose my passport and we immediately get chased by these people who are after something else.”
The film will see Hill portray an engineer isolated from his family, Segel to play an alcoholic has-been musician and Schwartzman as a spoiled and cowardly three-time Grammy winner. There’s also a reported fourth member of the adventurous congregation who has yet to be cast.
“I write with these two guys, Max Winkler and Matt Spicer. Spicer found this ‘Adventurer’s Handbook’ at Barnes and Noble and he was just reading it one day and it says, ‘What happens if you get swallowed by an anaconda, you cut your way out.’ We were sort of laughing at all the things… We sold it and it was great and now we’re almost done. Working Title is producing it with myself and Max and Matt. Akiva is directing.”
“We want the action to feel almost like ‘Children of Men’ where it’s like, ‘Holy shit, these guys are going to die,’” Hill continues. “You never feel like those people are going to die in those movies. We’re like, ‘Whoa, Jonah Hill, Jason Segel and Jason Schwartzman are going to pass away from this gun battle,’ and it’s like they’re shitting their pants because they’re so scared and have no idea what to do because they’ve never held a gun before.”
Hill also reiterated an admiration David O. Russell’s ability to juggle comedy and hard action on “Three Kings” which he felt was like “real guys in action but it was scary and sometimes hilarious.” Being a self-described ’80s adventure flick though, Hill and company were, of course, most inspired by Steven Spielberg’s “Indiana Jones.”
“We started watching ‘Indiana Jones’ and these movies are so funny because Harrison Ford, they never act like anything that’s happening is crazy. If this was happening to me, like if a fucking giant ball was running after me I’d be like, ‘That’s weird and fucked up. That’s crazy. That’s insane.’ So we just pictured me and Segel, who we wrote that part for, and Schwartzman — three of the four [parts that Spicer, Winkler and I wrote were specifically for the actors] — and we started talking about who we went to high school with and character traits and friends of ours. We were like, ‘What if we made this movie about four guys who wanted to go just discover themselves, who are somewhat looking for something in their lives and they find this book and the book causes them to go find this island just to connect with each other and fulfill some quarter life crisis that they’re going through before they get married and have to deal with how fucking mundane life is?’”
“In those [coming-of-age type] movies everything kind of seems to go right. Something terrible happens and then something great happens. So our idea for this was what if every time that something fortunate happens something fucking thirty times worse happens immediately after? So that was our idea, to never let these guys have a victory, basically. It’s truly a fun ride. It’s like a really cool, grounded adventure movie if that exists.”
Production is slated to begin on “The Adventurer’s Handbook” sometime in 2011 with Hill occupied in the mean time by “The Sitter” with David Gordon Green, “Moneyball” with Brad Pitt and “21 Jump Street” early next year. He also has both Nicholas Stoller’s “Get Him To The Greek” and the Duplass Brothers’ “Cyrus” hitting this summer. Hill’s certainly come a long way since appearing in a cameo role in “I Heart Huckabees.”