Harvey and Bob may have gone, but Ben Affleck’s love affair with Miramax lives on.
Affleck The Elder has just signed on to star alongside Jason Bateman, Mila Kunis and Kristen Wiig in Mike Judge’s latest comedy, Extract – which is being bankrolled by, you guessed it, Miramax.
Affleck will play an ambulance-chasing lawyer in the movie, which is about a flower-extract plant owner (Bateman) enduring a hideous run of bad luck.
Colour us excited – Affleck and Bateman have worked together before, in one hilarious scene in Smokin’ Aces, and it’ll be interesting to see how they spark off each other in Judge’s latest. Certainly, Bateman can do no comedic wrong in our eyes, and Affleck has shown a proclivity for the funny in the past (remember his turn in Shakespeare In Love?).
It’s all part of the Affleck Comeback Special, that began with 2006’s Hollywoodland, continued with his directorial debut, Gone, Baby, Gone and will gather further momentum with his starring role in State Of Play, due out next year.
In other Extract news, Clifton Collins Jr. has also joined the cast of the movie, which begins filming on Monday in Los Angeles. He’ll play a factory worker who loses a body part in an accident and is due a huge settlement – presumably that’s where Affleck’s character comes in.
As we’ve said before about this project, we hope it works out for Judge, after Office Space and Idiocracy both undeservedly flopped. Cult status is all well and good, but one of these days he’s bound to make a comedy that people actually want to go see at the picturehouse. Perhaps Extract will be that movie.