Shawn Levy is continuing to assemble a fine ensemble for his next comedy project This Is Where I Leave You. He already has Tina Fey, Jason Bateman, Corey Stoll, Jane Fonda, Adam Driver and Kathryn Hahn, which is a great start. Levy’s now adding Timothy Olyphant, Ben Schwartz and Abigail Spencer.
Adapted by Jonathan Tropper from his novel, This Is Where I Leave Yo****u finds a distinctly dysfunctional Jewish family coming together for the first time in years when the patriarch dies. His big final wish is that all his grown children and their respective other halves/children sit Shiva together for a week as a way to make them bond and sort out their various problems. Naturally, this is no easy task...
Olyphant, who does such brilliant work on the small screen with Justified, is playing Horry, a former flame of Fey’s Wendy. They were inseparable as teenagers and seemed fated to be together forever until a tragic accident left him brain damaged and living with his mother and her moving on to an unhappy marriage. Schwartz, a comedy mainstay across the pond who appears on the likes of Parks And Recreation and House Of Lies, is the rabbi, who tries to act cooler than his job.
Spencer, another small-screen veteran (Mad Men in particular) who has also appeared in film such as Cowboys & Aliens and** Oz The Great And Powerful**, is on as Bateman’s wife, who is cheating on him with his boss.
Levy will be starting the cameras whirring soon in New York. His latest, The Internship, will be out here on July 4.