Earlier this year, it was reported that Wes Anderson was hard at work penning an adaptation of the French film “My Best Friend.” The film, about an obnoxious man who is forced to find a best friend, in order to win a bet with his business partner is a cutesy enough comedy, but it didn’t particularly seem to be up Anderson’s alley.
We reviewed Anderson’s draft that was turned in at the end of last summer, and while it was more or less faithful to the original, it did open up the characters and plot into something that could conceivably fit Anderson’s now trademark sensibilities and regular cast of players.
However, in an interview with Movieline, Anderson says that for now, he doesn’t have a “plan to direct [the film]. Here’s his full answer:
Speaking of your next live-action project, what is going on with The Rosenthaler Suite — your rewrite of the French comedy My Best Friend? Are you definitely not directing that?
I don’t have a plan to direct that. I wasn’t hired on to direct it; I was just hired to write. It was something where I thought that, while I was doing Mr. Fox, I’d be able to make this script for Brian Grazer. But in the end I liked a lot of it very much.
Is it just us, or does it sound like Anderson may still have a crack at directing it? On the one hand he makes it pretty clear it was just a writing gig but on the other he does like the end result of what he came up with (and maybe we’re just hopefully projecting) and wouldn’t mind taking a shot at directing it.
However, on the other side of the coin, this was a job for mega-producer Brian Grazer who isn’t exactly known for throwing his weight behind indie-minded, nuanced dramedies. And let’s remember that the other big-league French comedy adaptation coming down the pike this year is “Dinner With Schmucks” (a remake of the pretty vicious comedy “Le Diner Du Cons”) with the kings of understatement Steve Carell, Paul Rudd and Zach Galifianakis. We more easily see Grazer going down a similar road (particularly if that film is a smash) with this project (and having someone else shave the nuance out of Anderson’s script) than trying something a little more risky, but hey, stranger things have happened.