SlashFilm handily points to a Sundance podcast interview with Adventureland director Greg Mottola, in which he gives up a little bit of detail about Paul, his upcoming film scripted by (and starring) Simon Pegg and Nick Frost.
The gist is that Pegg and Frost play guys on a road trip to Comic Con; they end up at Area 51, where they meet an alien named Paul. And because every genre fan is destined to play alongside their very own Jar-Jar Binks one day, Paul is mostly CGI.
Sez Mottola: [Paul] is a far more technically challenging movie than Adventureland was, because one of the main characters is a fully non-existent creature. He’s basically an alien who may be, let’s say, 70% CGI and the big challenge is that he needs to be a very funny, comedic method actor. It’s not the kind of CGI character where we want people to go, ‘Oh wow, look what they did, that’s so cool.’ It’s actually the kind of CGI character where we want people to just treat him like another actor in the film. He should be fully believable and multi-faceted and has to give a great performance. He just doesn’t exist. We’ve been doing a lot of test trying to figure out how to pull that one off.
I’m kidding with the Jar-Jar crack. The three key talents on this movie have me really looking forward to seeing the final result.