I wish there was some kind of graph out there, charting the careers of those who starred in Judd Apatow’s short-lived television show: Freaks and Geeks. I mean the show is sort of a factory for actors, apart from Rogen, Franco and Cardllini, we have Martin Starr who was in Adventureland, Samm Levine can be found in Inglorious Basterds, and Jason Segel has been racking up the comedy roles left and right since Knocked Up. Segel will be joining Jonah Hill and Jason Schwartzman in the globe-trotting comedy The Adventurer’s Handbook, and making it hard on helmer Akiva Schaffer to direct a scene where two Jasons are involved.
Inspired by the book by Mick Conefrey and scripted by Jonah Hill, Matt Spicer and Max Winkler, this is about a quartet of pals go on a global adventure, inspired by the hardcore stories of explorers whose tales are chronicled in Conefrey’s book. Segel would play a talented musician who never got his act together, becoming a backup piano player and an alcoholic; Hill plays an engineer, isolated from his family; Schwartzman is a spoiled and cowardly three-time Grammy winner.
THR reports that Eric Fellner and Liza Chasin will produce for Working Title and that Anthony Bregman (Synecdoche, New York) is also producing. Production would begin early next year, and I imagine that it will be slotted as a 2011 release, perhaps a March release or a summer tentpole depending on how Universal evaluates their forgettable 2009 year of comedies that underperform at the B.O. All that is left to cast now is to the fourth amigo. Who would you cast with the three mentioned above?
