Somewhat unexpectedly, Sundance drama/adventure thing “Swiss Army Man” proved to be something of an overperformer this weekend. With wildly divided reviews out of Sundance, and the premise of being a buddy movie with Paul Dano as a suicidal stalker and Daniel Radcliffe as a farting corpse with a boner-compass, it seemed like it would be a bit of a box office washout.
But A24 appear to have worked something of a miracle, with the film outperforming other arthouse releases significantly and ending up with one of the best theater averages of 2016 to date. Which makes directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, hot music video helmers turned feature directors, hot properties. And if you’re to believe their Hollywood Reporter interview, they have an…interesting potential project they want to tackle at some point.
“One of my dreams is to make ‘White Chicks’ as a hard-R, Oscar-worthy drama, starring the original cast,” Scheinert told the trade, about Keenan Ivory Wayans’ 2004 comedy. “It would be about gender and race relations in the 21st century, starring the Wayans Brothers. I don’t know if you have seen “White Chicks” lately, but it has a lot of meat to it and explores everything, like class, gender, race, the handicapped, age.”
It’s…an interesting idea, and one that is presumably mostly a joke (“Every project we make is us trying to reach some sort of weird and silly cosmic dream,” says Scheinert earlier in the interview), particularly given the question of cultural appropriation that would probably come from Scheinert tackling his ‘dream’ project. But given that these guys just made “Swiss Army Man,” we wouldn’t rule anything out. If you haven’t seen the new film, it’s in theaters now.