While Seth Rogen’s title as the purveyor of broad comedy has faded of late, the actor-turned-director is back with this year’s apocalyptic comedy This Is The End. The film, produced by Sony, has ample studio confidence behind it. So much so, that they’ve granted Rogen another chance to step behind the directorial camera, this time for assassination comedy The Interview, and James Franco is reportedly eyeing a lead role.
Rogen has signed on to write, star and direct the film – now, that’s what I call multi-tasking – and the new-fangled director will reunite with co-director pal, Evan Goldberg. The directing duo have some excellent writing credentials behind them, including 2007’s comedic gem Superbad.
The Interview gravitates around a talk show host and his producer who inadvertently find themselves in the midst of an assassination attempt to kill the North Korean president. It sounds edgy, maybe veering a little near the knuckle, but more than anything The Interview has the potential to demean any contemporary fears concerning the northern region of the Korean peninsula.
Take the aforementioned comedy about the apocalypse for example, a sure sign that humanity is getting over their innate fears about the end of the world in a post-2012 society. So Rogen and Goldberg’s follow-up could fall in line with this subversive tendency.
A brief cameo in The Green Hornet aside, this will be the first time James Franco and Seth Rogen collaborate in front of the camera since Pineapple Express – their own quirky riff on the action genre. That film was a definite success and one that wasn’t lacking in the foul-mouthed belly laughs department. Friends since their acting debut in Freaks and Geeks back in 2000, Franco and Rogen bring a witty chemistry to their shared work and it’s high time the pair revisit their proverbial genre.
No word of a release date just yet, but you can bet that Seth Rogen’s latest escapades for The Interview will revolve around the same astute, pot-smoking comedy that brought him to our collective attention. Keep your web browsers pointed here and we’ll update you as we find out the details!
