New Chris Morris / Jesse Armstrong Project? (2013)

[danyulx]

Good evening whores.. I'm a lifelong "lurker" on this site, never been much arsed posting anything before to be honest, namely due to my brutal dyslexia making typing being quite a headache for me. Always a good read though, cheers Neil and all the rest of you over the years..

After joining IMDB PRO tonight on a 14 day free trial I noticed this - http://pro.imdb.com/title/tt1709175/ - listed in our man Morris's "IN DEVELOPMENT" section, which I'm suprised to see no one's picked up on here yet. Both Morris and Armstrong listed as writers (and no Director listed as yet), an American production it looks like.. Detail as follows, not listed on the bogstandard IMDB site -

*****
"Untitled Lee Atwater Project" (2013)

Project Notes: Script is in development.

Production Co: Gary Sanchez Productions (Los Angeles, CA 9004)

Genre: Biography / Drama

Plot outline:
A look at the life and career of political strategist Lee Atwater, who crafted winning Presidential campaigns for Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush during the 1980s.

Writers:
Jesse Armstrong
Christopher Morris

Producers:
Adam McKay

IN DEVELOPMENT
The status was last updated on 11 February 2011.
Since this project is categorized as being in development, the data is subject to change or could be removed completely.
*****

[Jack Shaftoe]

Some small mention of this on the Marc Maron WTF podcast with Adam McKay, but didn't mention Morris was involved, interesting.

Also, hello!

[jutl]

I'd recommend

http://www.boogiemanfilm.com/

for anyone looking to swat up on Atwater.

[Neil]

Thanks for the info, and for delurking.  Welcome abroad.

Can't anyone just add stuff to IMDB, or is it different with IMDb Pro?  It was certainly inaccurate info being added which resulted in the passing on of accurate data to me when Nathan Barley was being produced. 

Here's what Morris said about his next project in a recent interview:

As for Morris, he's carefully tending his next ideas to see which one is going to make it out alive:

'You get the small pets and lock them in a hot box, then see which one survives. At the moment they're rattling around and shrieking quite a lot. In a month's time or so I'll kind of know which one I'm doing. One of the pets is a little, invisible shriek radio pet. If I open the box and the others are dead, I'll know it's a radio idea I have to do.'

[Tiny Poster]

Thanks jutl! And danyulx.

[danyulx]

A quick scout about online also brings up this interview with Adam Mckay from last August - http://theplaylist.blogspot.com/2010/08/adam-mckay-developing-biopic-of.html - which confirms at least Armstrong's involvement with it..

We have Jesse Armstrong working on a draft of that, and we have research being done. That would definitely be a smaller movie. I don't think you'd get more than $8 million or $6 million to do that; even with a giant star, I don't think you'd get more than that."

I'd guess at Morris's involvement with this (if it all) being relatively minor, a helping hand (a la The IT Crowd, Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle), rather than this being his next Major Project or whatever - additional material, that sort of thing.. It looks like McKay plans to direct it anyway, from that article.

....I seem to recall - in one of the many Four Lions interviews I heard - Morris being asked about future projects, and him vaguely hinting at the possibility of "doing something over here next" (here being America, where he was). But I could have imagined it.

[Old Nehamkin]

I just asked Jesse Armstrong on twitter whether it was true he and CM were writing this and he replied:

Not Chris and I - I've written a script for Adam McKay.

So it looks like the IMDB listing is false.

[John Bayliss]

McKay talked about this on Real Time With Bill Maher for a bit.