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EXCLUSIVE: Warner Bros sure is high on Russell Brand, the MTV-favorite British actor who’s already attached to reprise the Dudley Moore role in an Arthur remake for the studio. I’m told the studio has just paid mid-6 against high-6 figures to acquire a pitch by William and Scott Bindley that has WME client Brand attached. He’ll play a David Beckham-like millionaire soccer star/playboy who gets arrested in a West Texas and sentenced to community service. His task: coach the hapless local high school soccer team in a Friday Night Lights town. Bill Bindley and Mike Karz will produce with Brand and his manager Nik Linnen. Brand has been a bit of a bad boy himself — he resigned from the BBC after he and a cohort left obscene messages for Fawlty Towers star Andrew Sachs. (Brand bragged about bedding his granddaughter.) Maybe tact isn’t his strength, but Brand certainly lit up the screen in films like Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and he reprises the rocker character from that film in the upcoming Get Him to the Greek. ICM and Rain Management Group sold the script by the Bindleys, who wrote Vicenza for Sony and Overbrook. Scott Bindley’s script Say Uncle has Zach Galifianakis attached at Warner Bros.
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Russell Brand lights up the screen? I’m not even sure he’s funny.
Something about Russel Brand leaves me cold. He just strikes me as all image no substance. There’s too much carefully styled artifice to his “scruffy rebel” image for me.
I’ll bet dollars to donuts that every character he plays, from tippling society gadabout Arthur, to this soccer player will look, sound, and act exactly like every other character he’s ever done.
“but Brand certainly lit up the screen in films like Forgetting Sarah Marshall…”
Really? Can you name one?
No comment necessary. Quick flush this thing down the toilet before it grows and multiplies. Keep plunger handy in case plumbing begins to back up.
Why shouldn’t an idiot agent sign him to a gargantuan deal? He’s British, he talks funny,has something resembling a beard crawling across his grill and he looks like Chuck Manson’s lost son.
Ari if you don’t sign him your a fool and somebody else will! Hurry! Hes’ hot now. Hes’ Enron in 99′, he’s going nowhere but up until ofcourse, he crashs.
“but Brand certainly lit up the screen in films like Forgetting Sarah Marshall”…
No, he really didn’t. The only reason to watch that movie was for Mila Kunis.
But how does this guy get so much coverage, yet a genuinely funny + talented guy like Steve Coogan is barely mentioned?
Because Steve Coogan is over 40.
I heard that GET HIM TO THE GREEK is going to be aboslutely AMAZING!!! Saw his standup recently and literally couldn’t breathe from laughing so hard. Russell is so extremely brilliant and talented… come on.
New publicist? Welcome to Hollywood. Learn how to be subtle.
If you have had the pleasure of seeing Russell do his stand up, you know his star quality and his ability to owe a stage. In his breakout role as the rocker boyfriend in FORGETTING SARAH MARSHELL Russell dominated. When GREEK comes out this summer, Russell is going to blow up domestically. Americans are going to see the Russell that has been selling out areas with his stand up comedy for years in the UK. Watch out America, this funny man will capture your hearts in what stands to be one of this summer’s best blockbusters.
Wow, I can’t wait. I love it when my heart gets captured.
Geez, your ridiculous post is so over the top you sound like you’re channeling Troy McClure shilling for “Man vs. Nature: The Road to Victory!” on “The Simpsons.”
NEWSFLASH: Irrespective of what the Brits might think of him, he def ain’t funny (although he certainly thinks he is), he’s annoying as hell and, God willing, his fifteen minutes of fame will lapse once a few of these shitty movies he’s lucky enough to be in tank…..and, please, take Shia Labeouf with you, Russ!
And yes, comedylover, I have witnessed his schtick, although not all of it because, after all, you don’t need to eat a whole rotten egg to deduce that it’s rotten.
Ricky Gervais and Simon Cowell just aren’t enough. We need more annoying Brits to stink up the American airwaves. Bring ‘em on.
So… You’re saying that they are remaking Mighty Ducks, about soccer, in Texas, with Russell Brand?
Alright, I can deal with that, but what is the motivation behind using him to remake Drop Dead Fred??? The money Hollywood wastes on stupidity will never cease to amaze me.
Remember when comedians had to be funny to work…
Calgon, take me away.
love the brand
It’s very kind of the US Entertainment industry. Jeremy Kyle, Russell Brand… Anything for Jonathan Ross?
I’m pullin’ for the dude. He was so funny in ‘Marshall’.
Hollywood continues on its uncreative path. I remember this movie for the combined great talents of Dudley Moore, John Gielgud and Liza Minelli. I don’t see this being successfully replicated.
What? Why would anyone “bank” on Russell Brand?
He’s so unfunny, untalented, and unattractive…
Russell is hilarious, LOVE him.
Russel is seriously hilarious and I can’t wait for Arthur to come out. He will really bring the movie to life.
I wasn’t totally sure about Russell Brand before, but I have seen “Get Him to the Greek.” Whether you get him from what you have seen (or not) now doesn’t really matter one bit. THIS GUY’S LIFE IS ABOUT TO CHANGE !! “Greek” is phenomenal ! Russell draws off of something really deep–he’s a real actor in this movie. He jumps off the screen as a major presence, and he is hilarious. It makes sense that people are unsure if they haven’t seen him in this film, but mark my words, once “Get Him to the Greek” comes out in June, everyone who sees him will truly get it. He’s real, deep, sexy, funny and a major movie star.
I loved him in Sarah Marshall, will see the spin-off movie, but I just don’t see him having much of a range. He’s like the newest Pauly Shore. I enjoyed HIS movies, but he was the same character in every movie. Same with Brand.
But hey, the guy gets good money for movies, and gets to be with Katy Perry – so he’s got it good!
When the guy is ‘on’ he is damned funny, so absurd that he makes it back to sympathetic. When he misses he looks like a complete toolbag. Hope that the directors and producers can keep him between the rails, as I could use a fun movie.
Counting down the days until GREEK comes out!!!
Brand won me over. I can’t wait to see Greek this summer. Heard it’s amazing.
Russell Brand is seriously the man. Everything from his books to the way he dresses is brilliance! Maybe some of his humor is a bit too refined for the average Middle American CSI enthusiast- but if you know the deal, you know Russell is fantastic.
This guy is huge in Britain. I bet he flops here. Brand has tons of followers in the UK who love his bad-boy stuff telling old guys he banged their grand-daughter. Women in the UK eat this stuff up.
Americans like their bad boys, but they like them different. Howard Stern (was) the original bad boy, when he’d send his sidekicks out to interview Black and Hispanic guys in NYC, who sounded semi-literate and idiotic (critics allege Jay Leno stole this idea and cleaned it up for “Jaywalking”) to the amusement of Stern’s East Coast young White Male audience. It was very un-PC.
Audiences in the US for comedies tend to be very male. They like guys who mock PC, snobs, and authority figures while standing in for blue and lower white collar White guys: Adam Sandler, Kevin JAMES !! and so on are not women’s ideas of Bad Boys.
IF … and that’s a big IF (and pretty unlikely) Brand can get his head around that, and come off as the comic tribune of Joe Average, he can do well. Kevin James made a huge haul with Paul Blart, Mall Cop, despite that movie being so obvious every punch line was not just telegraphed but written in braille.
My guess is that this guys whole persona is tied up in being the bad boy that British women love, and he’ll end up a total nothing in the US. Gervais has not scored, nor really has Rowan Atkinson, in movie comedies. Hell Larry the Cable Guy’s next movie will probably make more than Brand’s next movie.
If the UK is in the Atlantic Ocean, why does all their trash wash up on the Pacific coast?