Back last September, the name Burt Wonderstone was being thrown out there as one possible vehicle of many for Steve Carell. It's now officially steaming ahead, with this morning's news thatWonderstone has found a director in the form of Charles McDougall{
If that's not an immediately familiar name, it's because McDougall hasn't done a great deal of cinema work before (although he directed Jimmy McGovern's Heart in 1999), but he has impressive previous TV form, not least with Carell himself, as a director on the US Office, The Tudors, Parks & Recreation, and the pilot of Desperate Housewives, for which he nabbed an Emmy.
The screenplay by Chad Kultgen and John Francis Daley & Jonathan Goldstein (Horrible Bosses, The $40k Man) has been kicking around Hollywood for a few years now. In the pre-Carell days it had Jake Kasdan attached as director for a time, but ultimately came to nothing and has been languishing at New Line ever since.
But it does sound as if the time is now right for Burt Wonderstone to meet the world: the story of a Las Vegas magician who stands to lose serious face with his greatest rival after he accidentally kills his assistant (does he saw her in half?) sounds perfect for the post-Dunder Mifflin Carell. It'd just be too much to hope that Will Arnett might play his opposite number, but our fingers and toes are crossed anyway.
New Line is hoping to pull a 2012 release out of the hat; shooting is pencilled in for the autumn.