Mike Fleming

dinner_for_schmucksFocus Features will give Dinner For Schmucks scribes David Guion and Michael Handelman their shot at matching director’s chairs. The duo just got set to write and direct Cruise of the Gods, a remake of the 2002 BBC comedy about a fan cruise held in honor of The Children of Castor, a fictitious 1980s post apocalyptic sci-fi TV series. The cast is the guest of honor, but they’ve got mixed feelings, specifically dependent on whose career stalled with the series, and who went on to bigger and better things. The comedy’s being shepherded by Focus execs Michael Pruss and Kahli Small, and produced by Red Hour’s Stuart Cornfeld and Ben Stiller, with Jeremy Kramer exec producing with Baby Cow Productions’ Steve Coogan and Henry Normal. It’s got that showbiz-gone-very-wrong premise, which Stiller and Cornfeld milked for laffs in films like Tropic Thunder and Zoolander. Coogan, who appeared in the original BBC series as well as Tropic Thunder, might well play one of the cast members  aboard the cruise. Paramount releases the Jay Roach-directed Dinner For Schmucks on July 30, which Guion and Handelman adapted from the Francis Veber French film Le Diner de Cons.