With Oscars on their mantlepieces for The Descendants, and summer hit The Way Way Back under their belts, writer-director duo Nat Faxon and Jim Rash have established themselves as two of Hollywood’s most exciting new filmmakers. In The Descendants, they struck an extraordinary balance between humor and heartbreak, and The Way Way Back confirmed that Faxon and Rash were as capable behind the camera as they were with pen and paper. Now, it appears that for their next project, action-comedy The Heart, the duo are aiming for a mini-Way Way Back reunion, with news that Sam Rockwell and Allison Janney have both joined the cast.
In the film, written and directed by Faxon and Rash, Kristen Wiig stars as a cash-strapped woman who agrees to begin trafficking black market organs with a mysterious stranger. Rockwell will play said stranger, which doesn’t come as too much of a surprise, considering the cool-as-a-cucumber nutjobs he’s played in films like Seven Psychopaths and Iron Man 2. Janney is in talks to play Wiig’s ruthless boss, who maintains two boyfriends (still uncast).
The Heart had been in the works for a few years now with Faxon, Rash and Wiig, all of whom knew each other as members of the improv troupe The Groundlings, but it was shifted in favor of The Way Way Back. Now that the duo are locking in a cast and have set cameras to roll in North Carolina this May, The Heart seems all but certain to get off the ground before any other projects that Faxon and Rash have been working on.
There will likely be more casting announcments for The Heart in the coming weeks, and I can only hope that Faxon and Rash are able to pull in more of their frequent collaborators to join the cast. It would be great to see Steve Carell and Rob Corddry take on the roles of Janney’s character’s two boyfriends, and I’d also love to see Maya Rudolph take a role, however small, so that she can trade barbs with Wiig yet again (the two starred in Bridesmaids).
As always, we’ll keep you posted when we hear more.
