Well, aren’t we happy we didn’t place this one on our 100 Most Anticipated Films of 2024 feature (not that it had shot, so it wouldn’t have been ready). And it looks like the rumors are true. Adam McKay’s serial killer Netflix pic “Average Height, Average Build” is dead and isn’t moving forward. McKay is evidently eying a new film altogether.
But let’s lament what’s not happening first because it would have been a Most Anticipated Film for 2025 and guaranteed within the top five.
The film was supposed to be a political satire focused on a serial killer. The logline essentially: A serial murderer hires a lobbyist to change the law so that he can commit murder more readily. The murderer attempts to stop a retired police officer from following his trail because he won’t give up on the killings.
Netflix announced the pick-up of the movie in April 2023, and the cast would have starred Robert Pattinson, Amy Adams, Robert Downey Jr., Forest Whitaker, and Danielle Deadwyler.
Rumors surfaced earlier today that “Average Height, Average Build” had fallen apart. Deadline says, however (sounding like they are carrying someone else’s water, to be honest), that because climate change is becoming such a bigger global threat, McKay is pivoting instead to make an Untitled Climate Change film as his next project (uh, didn’t he just do that, more or less, with “Don’t Look Up”?).
But “Average Height, Average Build” was rumored to cost around $150+ million, and given the climate (no pun intended) of movies these days, perhaps the streamer balked at the price. Rumors suggest McKay could shop the project around either, but everyone knows the only people forking out that kind of movie for dramas or comedies are Netflix and maybe Apple.
However, Deadline’s report refutes that and says McKay, who wrote the film, no longer intends to director go forward with it, so it might be as dead as Dillinger. McKay is a big climate change advocate, yes, but again, didn’t “Don’t Look Up” already tackle the idea of a culture that’s too addicted to social media, pop culture, and frivolous bullshit to prevent their own extinction? The impending meteor coming to crash and destroy Earth and civilization too divided, fractured, and broken to do anything about it was exactly an overt and obvious metaphor for climate change.
Well, let’s see what happens, but ‘Average Height’ sounded like a big swerve, and a climate change film from Adam McKay doesn’t sound like it would be radically different from “Don’t Look Up” unless he totally moved away from a satirical approach.
