It was reported on Thursday that Kristin Wiig and Will Ferrell will star in a movie musical called Everything is Coming Up Profits, a movie musical about Broadway’s “industrial musical trend” from the 1950s – 80s.
Steve Young’s 2013 book ‘Everything’s Coming Up Profits: The Golden Age of Industrial Musicals’ will be the source material for the musical comedy film. The book tells the history of industrial musicals, in which corporations commissioned Broadway-style musicals to be performed for their employees, hoping to inspire and inform them. Although most records of these musicals have been lost, Young managed to find many old vinyl records, pictures, etc. to put together a history of this phenomenon, and puts many of his findings on a companion website.
Marc Platt, who most recently produced musical hit La La Land, will be producing.
Songwriters Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, most well-known for the musical Hairspray, will be writing the music. Shaiman is no stranger to comedy, as in 1986 he had a brief stint on SNL as Skip St Thomas, the accompanying pianist for The Sweeny Sisters sketch, which earned him an Emmy nomination.
Ferrell was actually raised in a musical family, with his father Roy Lee Ferrell Jr being a musician with The Righteous Brothers, and is no stranger to the stage given his years of stand-up and improv (especially on SNL), as well as his Broadway debut in 2008 as President George W Bush in the one man show You’re Welcome America: A Final Night with George W Bush. Next year, look for him in James Franco’s Zeroville alongside Franco, Dave Franco, Megan Fox, and Seth Rogen, as well as The House will Amy Poehler.
Wiig shares Ferrell’s improv background (yet again, an SNL alum), but in recent years has made a transition from being an exclusively comedic actress to include more serious roles. Her role in Everything is Coming Up Profits will no doubt allow her to get back to her comedy roots. Before then though, expect to see her in the action thriller Now That’s What I Call alongside Leonardo DiCaprio and Zoe Kravitz, as well as biopic The Greatest Showman on Earth with Hugh Jackman and Zooey Deschanel.
No release date has been set for the project.
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