Things move fast in Hollywood. Case in point: just over two years ago, we wrote a news story about Jon Heder, back then in the first flush of post-Napoleon Dynamite stardom, signing on to a new film called Loudermilk.
And now, 27 months later, it looks like it might actually happen.
Craig Zobel has been brought on board to rewrite and direct the project, which will see Heder play a Napoleon Dynamite-type loner who becomes contaminated with a substance that gives him, for want of a better word, superpowers.
Sounds good to us – Heder has slowly but surely established himself as a bona fide comedic talent, with excellent turns in the likes of Blades Of Glory and School For Scoundrels, while he’s going to kill (trust us) as a pretentious street magician in Mark Steven Johnson’s forthcoming When In Rome.
The project, which will be produced by Heder, his twin brother Dan (hang on… how do we know he isn’t the one we’ve been watching all these years?) and older sibling, Doug through their Greasy Entertainment company, originated with writer-director Chris Bowman. Somewhere along the line he left the project and, post-Writers’ Strike, Zobel has been brought on to re-energise it.
"What's so cool about Craig is that his first film, Great World of Sound, has this very cinema-verite style, and we want to bring that style into Loudermilk,” says Dan Heder. “We want this to feel very real, even though it has a fantasy element to it.”
Other projects on the Heders’ Greasy plate include Mr. Machine, a comedy co-written by David Gordon Green and Danny McBride (we want to see it. Now.), and Three Men Seeking Monsters, a supernatural comedy set in England, which Mark Steven Johnson hopes to direct after he finishes When In Rome.