Mere hours after Domnhall Gleeson enlisted for Netflix’s original drama, The Hollywood Reporter brings word that Joel McHale has been added to National Lampoon origins movie A Futile and Stupid Gesture as Chevy Chase.
It’s a casting coup that’s enough to send Troy and Abed into a tizzy, now that McHale has been set to portray his former Community co-star. Centering on National Lampoon co-founder Douglas Kenney (Will Forte), the feature film will chart the magazine’s meteoric rise to prominence in the early 70s when it became a comedic mainstay. Then, Kenney and Henry Beard (Gleeson) formed a creative team with fellow Harvard student Robert Hoffman, working on the likes of Caddyshack and Animal House in the years that followed.
But when Kenney uprooted to move to Hollywood, the success story was blighted by tragedy, after the creator succumbed to crippling depression. Soon thereafter, he was found at the foot of a Hawaiian cliff in a suspected suicide. Chase, who was on the verge of flying out to meet with his old partner “got a phone call that Kenney was missing. His body was found at the bottom of the cliff, with his death at the age of 33 officially ruled an accident albeit somewhat unclear as to whether it might be a suicide.”
Tethered with a production budget in the range of $15-$20 million, Netflix is eyeing an April start date for A Futile and Stupid Gesture, which would put the company’s National Lampoon origins tale on course for a debut in late 2016.
