For a long time nobody wanted to touch Frank or Francis, Charlie Kaufman's directorial follow-up to the bonkers Synechdoche New York. Happily though, that's now no longer the case, and the film is up and running with Jack Black, Steve Carell, Nicolas Cage, and now Kevin Kline, who has just signed for no fewer than two roles.
Frank or Francis is a musical satire of Hollywood, which stars Black as Francis, a blogger with a powerful campaign to continually undermine Carell's Frank: a filmmaker who's cheating on his wife.
Kline will play screenwriter Richard Waller, the brother of the as-yet-uncast director Jonathan Waller, the most successful filmmaker in the world* (responsible for the worldwide all-time blockbuster Hiroshima). But he'll also play "Richard's Head", an animatronic disembodied noggin that assists Jonathan in making films with "the broadest possible appeal and zero artistic integrity".
Kaufman's Adaptation star Nicolas Cage is also on-hand as The Emcee, an actor famous for "commercial, high-concept films". Cage is, apparently, nothing if not self-aware and up for a laugh.
It all sounds like an easier sell than Synechdoche, but it's very early days yet. If we learn that anyone will be excreting paint or directing entire cities, we'll warn you in advance. Shooting on Frank or Francis is scheduled for January.
*Who might this character be based on? We could not possibly speculate.