Fresh off the back of her animated aural debut in Disney’s Wreck-It Ralph comes news that Sarah Silverman is in talks to star in Seth MacFarlane’s second full-length feature film as director and star, A Million Ways To Die In The West, which the Family Guy creator is also writing alongside Ted scribes Alec Sulkin and Wellesley Wild.
Considering Ted’s success both critically and commercially, it seems like a safe bet on the Take This Waltz actress’ part to get on board the project and join a cast boasting Amanda Seyfried, Charlize Theron and Giovanni Ribisi to play the latter’s fiancé, battling her Christian faith’s dictum on chastity before marriage with her day job as a prostitute.
The film is to center on a cowardly gunslinger being left by his wife only to find courage and romance once more when he meets a mysterious out-of-towner whose bad boy outlaw husband (played by Liam Neeson) doesn’t take kindly to his lady’s association with him and seeks to make things right, presumably in as violent and varmint-scutterin’ a manner as possible.
Sarah Silverman’s presence would bolster the film’s credibility with comedy fans, considering the main body of its cast are not largely comedians by trade (though Liam Neeson and Charlize Theron have made memorable appearances in television series on opposite ends of the scale of quality).
Seth MacFarlane’s debut feature Ted was a surprise hit last year, earning more for Universal than heavy hitters Battleship and Snow White and the Huntsman and proving the writer/actor/director had more strings to his bow than those that allow for his distinct but perhaps cinema-inappropriate animated series’ styles.
Its most welcome gesture was thrusting Mark Wahlberg back into the comedy spotlight where he belongs, but it also managed to be an emotionally involving and frequently hilarious film if by-the-numbers in every single regard as it comes to filmmaking procedure. Westerns have come in and out of vogue in the past ten years but with Django Unchained (and its myriad controversies) fresh in the mind, there’s no better time to get this off the ground.
A Million Ways To Die In The West is currently scheduled for a summer 2014 release. Excited? Aghast? Apathetic beyond consolation? Let us know how you feel about the film and Sarah Silverman’s rumored involvement below.
