Three summers ago, the female-centered comedy Bridesmaids hit Hollywood like a tidal wave. The raunchy R-rated comedy earned $288 million worldwide, made an instant star out of Kristen Wiig, formerly known primarily for her work on Saturday Night Live, and put a stark focus on the inequity between male- and female-dominated movies in the entertainment industry. Wiig co-wrote Bridesmaids with Annie Mumolo, and both earned an Oscar nomination for their efforts. The duo balked at the idea of a sequel to hit to their hit, but appear ripe to reunite for a new comedy based at TriStar Pictures, which Wiig is eying to make her debut as a director. In The New York Times piece where this story first hit, Wiig stated, “I’ve been wanting to direct for some time now. This seems like the perfect first project.”
In the untitled comedy, still very early in the development stages, Wiig and Mumolo will write, produce, and star in the film as “best friends who find themselves in over their heads and out of their depths, which were, perhaps, not too deep to begin with.” That’s not a whole lot to go on, but then again, Bridesmaids wasn’t exactly plot-heavy and was one of the most memorable comedies of the past decade. The duo are expected to begin writing the screenplay soon. No shooting schedule or release date plans have been disclosed as of yet. “We’re very excited to be writing,” Wiig and Mumolo said in a joint statement. “We will be going into a cave for months to finish. An actual cave. We found one that’s nice and big. We’re putting a couch in there.”
Entering that cave may take a while considering both Wiig and Mumolo have been quite busy as of late. Wiig, who since Bridesmaids, has been acting in diverse, indie terrain for the most part in the last couple of years (films like Friends with Kids, Girl Most Likely, Hateship Loveship which debuted this past spring and the 2014 Sundance prize winner The Skeleton Twins) is a part of the voice cast of How to Train Your Dragon 2 opening this week and has a wide variety of projects in various stages of development. She will next be seen on screen in the comedy-drama Welcome to Me opposite James Marsden and Will Ferrell, the drama Nasty Baby from acclaimed director Sebastián Silva (Crystal Fairy), the drama The Diary of a Teenage Girl opposite True Blood star Alexander Skarsgaard and will be a part of the voice cast for Sausage Party. Wiig is also expected to be seen in the comedy The Heart from The Way Way Back directors Nat Faxon and Jim Rash and in the comedy Loomis Fargo for Napoleon Dynamite director Jared Hess. Mumolo, who has recurring role on the NBC comedy About a Boy, also has a potentially big gig, as she is writing the screenplay for David O. Russell’s latest feature Joy, a drama based on the life of Joy Mangano. That film, which will star Jennifer Lawerence, tells the true story of a struggling Long Island woman who became a multimillionaire after inventing the Miracle Mop.
Either way, this could be a part of new wave happening at TriStar, the sleepy division of Sony who has had recent success with faith-based counter-programming like the spring hit Heaven is For Real. Thomas Rothman, the former head of 20th Century Fox (where he helped spearhead films like Wiig’s Christmas 2013 film The Secret Life of Walter Mitty) is now in charge of TriStar and this new comedy and the recent acquisition of Jonathan Demme’s drama Ricki and the Flash, starring Meryl Streep from a screenplay by Diablo Cody (Oscar-winning scribe for Juno) top an interesting (and very female friendly) set of films headed in the marketplace. Rothman’s jokingly stated on the Wiig-Mumolo reunion, “Kristen and Annie assured me that the film will be a searing and depressing drama, which is what the world needs right now.”
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