Remember Big Brothers? I wrote a Crop Report on it over a year ago, and I generally liked what I read. The screenplay, which was then credited to Moses Port and David Guarascio, centered on a pair of hard partying beer reps (Paul Rudd and Seann William Scott) who are forced into a Big Brothers program in order to save their jobs. It definitely needed some punching up, but the R-rated tone was spot on. I was also hopeful that this would be director Luke Greenfield’s box office payback for the unjustified theatrical failure of The Girl Next Door (which was badly mishandled by Fox before turning into a DVD/cable sensation). When I ran into Luke at the Arclight early last summer, he seemed upbeat about the latest draft of the script (which was being revised by Rudd).
Soon thereafter, Greenfield was replaced by Wet Hot American Summer‘s David Wain, at which point the film seemingly sprinted through principal photography. Now, Little Big Men (a working title, apparently), is aiming for a PG-13 and being reshot for a likely 2008 release. Things change quickly up in this piece.
While on the set of I Love You, Man, Rudd gave us the latest on the Universal comedy (which also stars Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Jane Lynch and Elizabeth Banks):
Rudd: We finish [I Love You, Man] in a couple weeks, I think, and then I don’t know. There’s talk of this strike, so we’ll see if that actually happens. I hope not. But I kind of wanted to take a little time off; I feel I was kind of overdue. I worked on a movie last year that we’re gonna do about a week of reshoots on, to add some additional scenes for it, and that comes out… I have no idea when.
Q: Is that the David Wain film?
Rudd: Yeah, it’s with David. The working title is Little Big Men. I don’t think that that’ll be the actual title of the movie. I don’t think the title has really been decided.
Q: I remember that film being set up [last year]. At first Luke Greenfield was going to direct, and it went through several permutations.
Rudd: It went through several, yeah, a lot – I think even before Luke Greenfield was involved. And then it was several writers, and then I wrote a version of it, and then David came on and we worked on a version of it together, and so it was kind of constantly changing. And, yet, I think at the end of the day it turned out pretty well. We had a screening of it, and, seeing where it’s at right now, I think everyone feels pretty good about it. So hopefully it’ll work out.