JoBlo bring up a very good point today. Judd Apatow didn’t direct Superbad, so we should start spreading the praise around to the movie’s real director Gregg Mottola too. Even if the studio behind Superbad tried to promote otherwise, Apatow only wrote Superbad which granted he should get huge praise for but just don’t forget Mottola was the one behindn the camera.
The site are reporting that Mottola won’t be working with Apatow on his next film and will instead direct a movie from his own script. The movie is titled Adventureland and is a period comedy set in the late-1980’s…
“The film will tell the story of a college grad ready to summer in Europe before starting grad school. Only problem is his father just got laid off and now he’s stuck at home in Long Island. Forced to get a job and support himself, he gets a job at the local amusement park Adventureland where comedy abounds and he falls in love”.
The film will begin shooting in Pittsburgh in October and is being produced by Sidney Kimmel Entertainment, the studio behind the successful flicks United 93 and Breach.
I always find Amusement Parks should be kept for really wacky horror films. Something a little off-beat and sinister or maybe a slasher film of some kind. Maybe I would be more excited it if was a horror movie set in a theme park but still, Mottola is obviously looking to quickly go out on his own and show us what he can do without a hilarious Apatow script.
Adventureland is of course the name of one of the parks in the various Disneyland Parks over the world, so I would probably expect some kind of fight from the Mouse to stop Mottola using the title for his flick.
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Yeah, theme parks do lend themselves more towards horror (even though they aren’t conventional theme parks, think of Westworld and Jurassic Park) but a rollercoaster comedy could work.
The places are so ridiculous (fake scenery, never-ending queues, pools of vomit, looney people driving themslves to the limit) that a comedy set in a theme park sounds fantastic. Sounds fun.
One correction: Judd Apatow didn’t write “Superbad” either, but he did produce it (as he did “Anchorman” and “Talladega Nights”). “Superbad” was written by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg when they were teenagers. By the time they got to the movie made (about 12 years later), they were too old to play teenagers … so Jonah Hill plays Seth and Michael Cera plays Evan.
There are a bunch of other upcoming movies written or co-written by Judd Apatow, though, including “Walk Hard” (written by Judd and Jake Kasdan), “Pineapple Express” (story by Judd, screenplay by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg), and “You Don’t Mess With Zohan” (written by Judd, Adam Sandler, and Robert Smigel).