Writer/Director Team Join ‘Three Mississippi,’ Will Ferrell And Mark Wahlberg’s Football Comedy
Sean AndersandJohn Morris, the writing team behindHot Tub Time Machine, She’s Out Of My LeagueandMr. Popper’s Penguins, are in negotiations to rewrite and eventually directThree Mississippi,a football comedy starringWill FerrellandMark Wahlberg.Originally calledTurkey Bowl, the film – which will be produced byAdam McKay– is about about rival families, lead by Ferrell and Wahlberg, who’ve played a very heated, neighborhood game of tackle football every year for 50 years. It’s also rumored to starAlec Baldwin, Rob RiggleandJeremy Renner.
Anders and Morris are best known as a screenwriting duo but, Anders also directedSex Drive(which the pair co-wrote) and the upcomingThat’s My Boywith Adam Sandler. Read more about the film and the new team behind it after the jump.
The Hollywood Reporterbroke the news of Anders and Morris joining the Warner Bros. project. The original script was by Robert Carlock and Scott Silver but there’s no word whether that’s being thrown out or just given a heavy polish.
With Anders and Morris now aboard, Warner Bros. is hoping to get the film in production in the Fall, which works perfectly forhow McKay described the movie:
It’s about these two rival families from — we’re thinking Philadelphia but we need to check in with Wahlberg and Ferrell and see what kind of accents they want to do. [Laughs] Alec Baldwin is the patriarch of one of the families, and Wahlberg is his son. He saw the Kennedys playing football on their front lawn at Thanksgiving, and boom, that’s it: “Anything the Kennedys do, we’re doing.” His family starts playing the other family that lives across the park from them. Over the years, Baldwin’s family hasn’t done too well — they own a crappy little bar in town — while the other family, which Will’s character eventually becomes the patriarch of, becomes really successful. The game gets nastier and nastier as the years go on, and Ferrell’s family starts just destroying the other family. After a massive heart attack, Baldwin’s character’s dying wish is that his estranged son, Mark, take over the game and finally win one. So Wahlberg has to put this ramshackle, convict, gambling-addict family back together again and beat the richies. The whole spirit of it is that it’s just a giant, fun ensemble comedy. We want to populate it with people we love. There’s a funny subplot with Rob Riggle where he’s a gay cousin that Wahlberg’s family sort of turned their backs on but he played football at Fresno State and they need him. We’re going to try to get Jeremy Renner to play an ex-con. The idea is to bring in, like, 15 people that we love in and just do a big, funny holiday movie.
This one has been on my radar for sometime and being as I enjoyedHot Tub Time MachineandSex Drive, I’m glad this pair will breath some new life into the film.
