Our anticipation levels for The Other Guys – the new Will Ferrell/Adam McKay film – were already pretty damn high, as you might expect. But they’ve risen still further with today’s news that Steve Coogan, Samuel L. Jackson and Dwayne Johnson have joined the cast. That’s a whole lot of funny.
The film stars Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg as two desk-bound cops who get a chance to follow in the heroic footsteps of two super-cops within their department when something goes awry. Jackson and Johnson, two of the coolest dudes around, will play the super-cops, while Coogan will play the villain, hopefully with Partridge-esque aplomb.
The addition of the trio to the already-cast Eva Mendes means that The Other Guys boasts, by some distance, the starriest ensemble of any Ferrell/McKay movie. And there’s also an intriguing lack of any of their usual rep company – no Paul Rudd, no John C. Reilly, no David Koechner etc. Does that indicate that this is going to be tonally very different from the likes of Anchorman, **Talladega Nights **and Step Brothers?
Time will tell, as always. Filming is currently underway, with a release date set for September 6, 2010.