Memorial Day weekend is right around the corner and by the looks of it out there, agents, PR folks and news leakers have already left for the weekend so let’s rewind to something we missed earlier in the week while we’re all lamenting the fact that a horrible sequel is set to gross over a $100 million this weekend, sadly.
We’ve heard recently about a new Will Ferrell/Mark Wahlberg project that “The Other Guys” director Adam McKay will be producing called “Turkey Bowl.” Well, McKay recently discussed the project at length, dropped some new details, a new possible title and the name of some actors he’s looking to court for roles in the film.
“The idea was originally conceived for Mark Wahlberg and Alec Baldwin,” McKay explained to EW. “Owen Burke, who’s a producer at Gary Sanchez, and I were talking about how crazily funny Wahlberg and Baldwin were in ‘The Departed‘ — how, even though it’s not a comedy, we could just watch them all day long. Burke dropped this idea, and I was like, ‘Oh my God, that’s a movie!’ Then Will [Ferrell] heard it and he wanted in.”
McKay got in deep with what the film’s about and its characters, who will play who and more.
“It’s about these two rival families from — we’re thinking Philadelphia but we need to check in with Wahlberg and Ferrell and see what kind of accents they want to do,” laughed McKay. “Alec Baldwin is the patriarch of one of the families, and Wahlberg is his son. He saw the Kennedys playing football on their front lawn at Thanksgiving, and boom, that’s it: ‘Anything the Kennedys do, we’re doing.’ His family starts playing the other family that lives across the park from them.”
He added, “Over the years, Baldwin’s family hasn’t done too well — they own a crappy little bar in town — while the other family, which Will’s character eventually becomes the patriarch of, becomes really successful. The game gets nastier and nastier as the years go on, and Ferrell’s family starts just destroying the other family. After a massive heart attack, Baldwin’s character’s dying wish is that his estranged son, Mark, take over the game and finally win one. So Wahlberg has to put this ramshackle, convict, gambling-addict family back together again and beat the richies.”
Many have noted that there’s already a very-recent indie football movie called, “Turkey Bowl,” and this hasn’t escaped the filmmaker. “We’ve had this thing in the works for seven months and we saw that [film] and we’re like, “Fuck, they’ve got our title!,” he exclaimed. “We’re tentatively calling it ‘Three Mississippi‘, as a working title.”
Well, at least they’re not just steamrolling over the title and stealing it like a certain soccer comedy did to a Noah Baumbach classic with some of these same participants. Not that we’re naming names or anything…
McKay says he “reserves the right” to direct the film if he wants, but that’s currently not the plan. Maybe if the script bowls him over, he’ll jump to the front of the line. The idea is making an ensemble film with lots of big-name cameos. “There’s a funny subplot with Rob Riggle where he’s a gay cousin that Wahlberg’s family sort of turned their backs on but he played football at Fresno State and they need him. We’re going to try to get Jeremy Renner to play an ex-con. The idea is to bring in, like, 15 people that we love in and just do a big, funny holiday movie.”
That’s great, though he may have to wait in line though as we already asked Renner to host our buddies’ little brother’s Bar Mitzvah next summer. While we haven’t heard back yet, we’re pretty confident he’s game.
We hope they’re all working for scale if they hope this to happen. “Three Mississippi” has no start date, but we imagine if all goes well, they’ll shoot it sometime next year assuming some major studio picks it up.