Slow News Day: Giant Falls Early, Mystery Men II, Paul and Patton's Pilot, Just Not That Promising

ITEM: Great news for premature ejaculators and non-cable owners: The entire first episode of Human Giant is now on iTunes for the price of no dollars. Yay.

ITEM: NBC has graciously allowed Tracy Morgan to continue being hilarious on a second season of 30 Rock. Whew.

ITEM: Ben Stiller is producing a new animated superhero satire for Dreamworks called Mind Master, which follows the empty life of a supervillain after he accidentally kills his nemesis. Meh.

ITEM: Comedy Central is taping a new pilot this week for a courtroom game show called Root of All Evil, featuring Paul F. Tompkins, Patton Oswalt, Andrew Daly, and Greg Giraldo, from Simpsons producer David Sacks. Go here if you'd like to attend. Whee.

ITEM: From the "Cancels Itself Out" News Department comes the announcement that Ken Kwapis will direct the film version of Greg Behrendt's non-fiction man-guide He's Just Not That Into You. Kwapis is a mainstay of contemporary classic television including Freaks and Geeks, The Larry Sanders Show, and The Office, cancelled out by the fact that he directed The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. And Behdrendt is a hilarious live comedian and David Cross associate, cancelled out by also hosting his own shitty daytime talk show. The final score, if you haven't been paying attention, is zero. Blah.

Slow News Day: Fatty Black, Pregnant Poehler, Hawaiian Freak, Preview Pie

ITEM: Jack Black is the latest actor to join Ben Stiller's Tropic Thunder, playing an overweight comedian named "Fats." One can only hope the movie's other jokes play on a slightly higher level.

ITEM: Austin Powers scribe Michael McCullens will make his directing debut with Baby Mama, in which Tina Fey hires Amy Poehler as a baby surrogate to avoid taking maternity leave. Hopefully that promising casting can eclipse the dumb-ass title, not to mention the plot, which is not only bland and predictable, but also strangely similar to SNL co-star Will Forte's recently wrapped script for The Brothers Solomon.

ITEM: Jason Segel, still best known as the lovelorn drummer of Freaks and Geeks, has lined up his first leading film role in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, a romantic comedy about a guy who decides to get over his break-up blues with a Hawaiian vacation, only to find his ex traveling to the same island with her new beau. Kristin Bell of Veronica Mars will play the titular role. How did Segel land the gig after years of wacky sidekick background acting? Well, he wrote it himself.

ITEM: The anticipated dramedy Waitress, written and directed by the late Hal Hartley protege Adrienne Shelly, finally has a trailer up. Unfortunately, it looks like an obnoxious, cutesy retread of every other uber-Southern indie flick you've ever seen, but will hopefully be saved by the comic talents of Nathan Fillion and Cheryl Hines.

Down with the Thunder

Tropic Thunder, already one of the most exciting comedies in development due to Stiller's return to directing and the involvement of Etan Cohen and Justin Theroux, has just gotten an extra kick of thunder with its latest casting news. Robert Downey Jr. will play Kirk Lazarus, a multiple-Oscar-winning acting legend who gets caught up with several other performers in a real-life war scenario armed only with the fleeting, oversimplified training skills taught to them in a Hollywood boot camp to prepare for film. Undeclared's Jay Baruchel has also come on board as a rookie actor on the team. Filming is schedule to start in July.

RDJ, as we like to call him, will be bringing his lizard-like quirks to all manner of major upcoming thrillers and superhero flicks, but for the purposes of this particular news channel, his next relevant project will see him playing a high school principal and foil to the Ferris-Bueller-esque title character in Charlie Bartlett. Baruchel will be seen this fall in Knocked Up, which could likely set him up with Jonah Hill, Jason Segel, and Martin Starr as a new generation of Frat Packers called "The Roommates." He'll also headline the dark comedy Pushing Up Daisies and the fanboy comedy... Fanboys, and his titular role in I'm Reed Fish is playing at U.S. Comedy Arts Festival this week.

Fanboy Scourge Defaces Dream Detective Project

While the rest of the film community is up in arms over Shawn Levy signing on to direct The Flash, he's fucking up the Comedyblog's week for a different reason. The humorless, family-friendly cut-and-paster behind Steve Martin's Pink Panther and the unfortunate blockbuster Night at the Museum is in serious talks to hold the clipboards on The Hardy Men, the second of Ben Stiller's long-time dream projects to be resurrected this year.

Stiller is hoping to star with Tom Cruise (?!) as the grown-up versions of popular paperback heroes the Hardy Boys. It's the sort of story that writes itself, and perfectly matches Stiller's frequently squandered gifts. Who doesn't want to see these kids still living in their police chief father's house and leeching off his cases? And although Cruise seems like a strange choice at first, since he's such a giant tool and all, remember that the two did some pretty amusing work together at the MTV Movie Awards a few years back, and besides, it could be a hell of a good time watching Cruise play up his persona as an overzealous, naive goofbox. Throw in any standard alt-goddess (say, Amy Poehler, Sarah Silverman, Jenna Fischer, or Kristen Wiig) as Nancy Drew, and you've got yourself an amusing little movie.

So why is FOX predestinating it to suck by considering throwing the worst director in Hollywood on board?

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Stiller's War

Ben Stiller's Tropic Thunder, which has been in rumored development for over a decade and has long ago been mistaken for dead, is set to start filming this July, according to Production Weekly. Stiller will star and direct from a script he wrote with Etan Cohen (Idiocracy) and actor Justin Theroux. The story follows a group of actors who go through a simplified, Hollywood-style boot camp to prepare for a big-budget war movie, and then end up having to use their miniscule combat knowledge when they're dropped into the middle of a real-life war. Stiller hasn't written or directed anything since the 2001 cult hit Zoolander. Presumably, he's been too busy making oodles of cash.

Recently, Stiller announced his interest in filming a sequel to Zoolander. He's also set to direct and star in a TV project for his wife Christine Taylor, and he recently finished shooting a remake of The Heartbreak Kid for the Farrelly Bros.

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Two-Lander

Ben Stiller is hoping to make a sequel to his moderate cult classic Zoolander, and is on the lookout for a studio to get involved. Stiller and co-star Owen Wilson used to talk frequently about doing a follow-up, but the project was temporarily derailed by the suicide of co-creator and co-writer Drake Sather in 2004, but Stiller has decided he and writing partner John Hamburg might go forward with it after all.

Sather was a veteran draftsman of Saturday Night Live and Larry Sanders Show, and his death also cut short a modernization of Mr. Ed for FOX, which might not have been as horrible as it sounds due to the involvement of Sather and fellow SNLer Jack Handey.

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Stiller and Schwartzman Give Louiso's Pease a Chance

According to Production Weekly, Jason Schwartzman and Ben Stiller have signed on to Todd Louiso's Marc Pease Experience. Louiso is best known for being in front of the camera in films like High Fidelity and Snakes on a Plane, but in 2002 he directed Phillip Seymour Hoffman in the gas-huffing dramedy Love Liza. This will be his second time in the director's chair, and his first time in the writer's desk, with co-writer Jacob Koskoff. Schwartzman will play the title character. There is absolutely no other information at this time. The Comedyblog has looked.

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