Paul Giamatti stepped in to replace Sean Penn’s role in the Farrelly Brothers’ “The Three Stooges” project back in the fall of 2009, right?
It seemed like a dubious rumor a the time (we never wrote a full story on it) and it turns out it was.
“My involvement in that was some completely flukey thing,” Giamatti told MTV today in an interview about the film “Pretty Bird” that we’ve never even heard of. “I was never supposed to be doing that movie.”
So what were the issues?
“Somebody said something to me at Sundance, and I thought [they] were kidding. They said to me, ‘Are you going to play Larry in The Three Stooges?’ And I thought that was just a joke question somebody was asking me, and I said ‘Yes I am,'” Giamatti explained. “Then it became this whole thing on the Internet. I don’t know what’s happening on that movie, I had no idea.”
So what is going on with the film? Well, for one, the Farrelly Brothers moved on to another film called, “Hall Pass” with Owen Wilson, so they’ll have to finish that and release it before they can even resume work on ‘Stooges.’
And last we heard earlier this year, Bobby Farrelly himself said that Sean Penn was back in the mix — he dropped out in the summer of 2009 in an attempt to stop working and save his marriage — Benicio del Toro was still interested, but Jim Carrey’s involvement was overstated to begin with and he probably wasn’t appearing in the picture.
Surely, we won’t know further developments until “Hall Pass” gets dated and the Farrelly Brothers start doing press rounds again.