Oh man…now I’ve heard just about everything a person could hear in one lifetime. See, I was out hunting up newsy bits to pass on to you–you know how I do–and what do I find?
They’ve already half cast the FOURTH installment of Shrek.
Dubbed Shrek Forever After, it will feature one of the best parts of both The Office and Zack and Miri Make a Porno, Craig Robinson, in a heretofore unseen role known as “Cookie”. Whether that’s a reference to a chef, as in one of Jim Varney’s last roles in the Disney movie Atlantis, or a reference to a baked good in the style of Shrek character The Gingerbread Man, it’s not yet known either way.
The rest of the cast, at last report, is pretty much the same, meaning that Mike Myers et al are about to get their hands on a whole lot of fat loot for sitting around reading a script into a microphone. Again.
I’ll be honest, the third one really wasn’t that great. It didn’t have the same unique qualities that made the first two Shreks so very interesting. Could the fourth one pull it out of its downward spiral? We’ll have to wait a good long while as they’re still casting.
Creators of two great modern comedy series (The Office and Extras), Ricky Gervais and Steven Merchant have teamed together to make their first ever movie, Cemetery Junction. The plan is to adapt it into a TV series (think MASH) after the film. There’s no release date set for this film (IMDB claims April 2010 for the UK), and the teaser tells us next to nothing about the story, which follows three insurance salesmen in the 70’s. However, it displays that Gervais and Merchant still have their trademark humour, gently demeaning Ralph Fiennes.
Ricky Gervais is the talent (well, half of) behind one of the most influential TV shows of the last decade, The Office. His follow-up, Extras, was less innovative and touching, but still excellent. So what is Gervais’s next project? This September will see the release of The Invention of Lying, a comedy about a world where no one ever lies, which Gervais’s co-directing and co-writing. But next year sees the release at his first attempt writing a feature film, Cemetery Junction. The plot follows three men working at an insurance company in 1970’s England. It stars Ralph Fiennes, Emily Watson, and Gervais himself. It’s also co-written by Stephen Merchant, the other half of the writing team behind The Office and Extras, so expect the comedy to be of top-class quality.
But that’s not the end of Cemetery Junction. Gervais also plans to adapt the premise into a TV series as well, as the idea was originally for television. Gervais said to Empire: “We thought that when you do a TV show and then do a film, generally it’s awful. One, it taints the film with a TV brush. It breaks its credibility a little bit. I don’t want to do a film that’s just an extended TV episode. So we want to give the film its best shot and treat it with the reverence a film deserves”. Sounds like a great idea.
Gervais is also working on a children’s animated film he created entitled Flanimals, due out in 2011.
Shawn Levy, who is shooting Fox’s Night at the Museum 2: Battle of the Smithsonian, intends to direct Steve Carell and Tina Fey in his next directing assignment, Date Night. Carell and Fey play a married couple who find their routine date night becoming much more than just dinner and a movie. The movie is set to begin production next year to schedule around both stars sitcoms: “The Office” and “30 Rock.”
Ever so funny Rainn Wilson, who intensely performs Schrute on NBC’s “The Office,” has spoken that he has been cast in DreamWorks’ “Transformers 2.” The sequel to last year’s megahit about a race of automotive automatons smashing it out on Earth reteams director Michael Bay with returning stars Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox, Josh Duhamel, Tyrese Gibson and John Turturro.
Filming started in Los Angeles in recent weeks and is moving to Pennsylvania and then overseas.
Although not a huge role, Wilson’s casting — his first in a big-budget studio franchise – may draw a bigger audience interested in comedic relief. He will play a college professor to LaBeouf’s new undergrad.
Oh man…now I’ve heard just about everything a person could hear in one lifetime. See, I was out hunting up newsy bits to pass on to you–you know how I do–and what do I find?
Ricky Gervais is the talent (well, half of) behind one of the most influential TV shows of the last decade, 
