John C. Reilly, who recently made box office gold with Will Ferrell in Talladega Nights, is set to star in another comedy that spoofs the musical bio-pic genre. Even with the recent wave of musician biographies that have come out, this is the last genre I would have guessed people were going to spoof next.
According to Production Weekly, Reilly will play ficitional music legend Dewey Cox, a sort of mix between Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison and Waylon Jennings. He will also be crooning the tunes himself. To me, that’s pretty awesome since I thought he had a great voice in Chicago.
Jake Kasdan will direct from a script he co-wrote with Judd Apatow. Kasdan hasn’t had a lot of experience directing features (Orange County is the only one I can think of, really), but he did spend some time in the world of television. Also being a fan of Freaks & Geeks and Undeclared, it’s very cool to be hearing that Apatow co-wrote the script. I’m a fan of the man whose name I can barely pronounce. Filming is set to begin in mid-Janurary in LA.
Again, the factors are there: Reilly, Apatow, odd genre choice to spoof. I’m hoping Apatow won’t let us down, and that he wrote a really fantastic script with Kasdan. I’m sure he has, but now they just need to pull it off.