It’s a dangerous thing to drop the title Blazing Saddles when describing your comedy, but that’s apparently the pitch for Seth MacFarlane’s next original project, the western comedy A Million Ways To Die In The West. The film will feature Amanda Seyfried and Charlize Theron, and is at the moment negotiating to add both Liam Neeson and Giovanni Ribisi, with even more stars likely to follow. This is of course being developed alongside Ted 2, which I assume MacFarlane will direct immediately after this new project.
The trade descriptions for the film so far have been kind of weird, though THR has a decent synopsis:
A Million Ways to Die follows a sheepish farmer (MacFarlane) who chickens out of a gunfight and sees his girlfriend (Seyfried) leave him. When he meets a notorious outlaw’s wife (Theron) who offers to teach him how to shoot, the farmer sees a chance to win back his love. Neeson would play Theron’s outlaw husband.
Period comedies aren’t exactly all the rage, so props to MacFarlane for having the stones to go there. I was pretty enthusiastic about Ted going in but found it to be as lazy as anything the Family Guy creator has ever made, so it’s tough to muster excitement here. Still, MacFarlane is a hit-maker, so I’m not counting it out either.