The Hangover actor Ken Jeong will be gunning for his favorite actor in a desperate bid to win a long-running celebrity death pool in an upcoming comedy for WWE Studios. The actor leads the currently untitled pic, being developed as “Untitled Celebrity Death Pool,” in the role of a struggling night club owner who, after becoming heavily indebted to a loan shark, decides to win the pool by speeding up the demise of his chosen celeb – David Hasselhoff.
The Hoff has a cameo role in the comedy, as does WWE’s Hulk Hogan. Other A-list celebrities are also expected to appear as themselves, being pursued by homicidal death pool participants. Darren Grant (Diary of a Mad Black Woman) will direct from a spec script written by Peter Hoare.
It’s been a pretty terrific 2014 so far for Jeong. On the small screen, his NBC cult comedy Community beat death once more when Yahoo Screen rescued it from cancellation and set it to premiere a sixth season this winter. And his Hollywood career is better than ever – Jeong will follow voice work in Penguins of Madagascar and Norm of the North with supporting roles in high school comedy The DUFF and Ride Along 2 before toplining political satire International Incident, which is being produced by Steve Carell via his Carousel Productions banner. Also on the docket for Jeong: a TV movie titled Dr. Ken.
Untitled Celebrity Death Pool will undoubtedly present another opportunity for Jeong to showcase his considerable comedic chops, and the premise sounds novel enough to entertain – especially if the producers rope in some very game celebs to be on the kill list.
Ashok Amritraj’s Hyde Park Entertainment, Image Nation Abu Dhabi and WWE Studios, all co-producing, are eyeing a release sometime next year, so we’ll likely hear about more supporting roles being cast in the very near future (can I suggest Ed Helms for the role of the loan shark?).
