Michael Winterbottom & Jack Black To Team Up For Bailout

Certain combinations just don’t sound quite right, and this is one of them. These are two names I’d never expect to hear working together on something. Jack Black and Michael Winterbottom, turns out that the two will be working together and on a comedy, called Bailout. The film will be based on the The Financial Lives of The Poets, a novel written by Jess Walter. Walter adapted his novel and Winterbottom will direct.

Black will play Matt Prior, a man who loses his job, crippled with debt and convinced his wife is having an affair. He then meets two losers while shopping who offer him a strange business opportunity and the last chance to save himself. I’m a bit surprised by this and I’m not. It appears to me Black is wanting to commit himself to a project that will put him again in the favourable eye of the critics, and with a director like Winterbottom and a premise that sounds semi-serious, he could be on track to do that.

For Winterbottom however, he just appears to be going through a genre tick list and has signed himself onto this simply because he hasn’t done an ‘out there’ comedy yet. That’s if one were being cynical about things. Of course there is evidence of this if you look through his filmography. Shooting is expected to begin in August expect to hear about more casting in the ensuing weeks and months. (Deadline)