Lee Toland Krieger and Samberg Team Up to Break Up ‘Celeste and Jesse’

Andy Samberg has joined Rashida Jones as the co-lead in the upcoming romantic-dramedy Celeste & Jessie, which Jones and actor Will McCormack penned a couple of years back. Also on board, the film will be helmed by Lee Toland Krieger, who gained modest fame from his previous film, the Indie Spirit nominee The Vicious Kind and has The West Memphis Three (we want to see this one) in development. Jones and Samberg are primarily known for their light-hearted and comedic characters in rom-coms and TV shows like The Office and SNL so this should present a platform to show more serious chops. There is currently no production start-date, though it should be off the ground soon enough to hit theatres by early-mid 2012.

Gist: A loving married couple comes to grips with the idea that they might not know how to continue their relationship ‘in that way’. They divorce and begin to entertain relationships with other people, all while retaining a close friendship with each other. The film will explore the dynamics of a post-sex relationship, and the tangled emotions it ignites. This is essentially an inversion of the tired scenarios springing up recently in Black List rom-coms like Friends With Benefits and No Strings Attached, while the actors have said that its sensibilities are aspiring to be more in line with a Judd Apatow picture.

Worth Noting: Seth Gordon was originally attached to the project, who left to helm Horrible Bosses when the production companies Fox Atomic and Overture Films each closed shop after taking on the film. We were thinking that the Black List mentioned screenplay was now in Relativity Media’s hands? 

Do We Care?: Time will tell if Jones and Samberg will have the chemistry to prevent this project from just being more-of-the-same. The two appeared together in 2009’s I Love You, Man as characters which were significantly unlike what they’d need to be here (for one thing, they’ll both be straight in this project). Their parts in the upcoming Friends With Benefits will likely be too small to provide an accurate reading of their compatibility. Krieger’s previous work has been a tad more jaded than your typical studio comedy, which is just what a film like this would need.