Mike Fleming

BREAKING: Adam Sandler has switched up his dance card and will push the Western he was going to star in to instead make a romantic comedy at Warner Bros. The film is untitled, and is set in the growing phenomenon of blended families. His Happy Madison will produce with Mike Karz’s Gulfstream Pictures, and the film will be his next starring vehicle, one that will mobilize quickly with a director and supporting cast.

That pushes back Ridiculous 6, the Western-themed laffer that Happy Madison had moved from Sony to Paramount last year. That film will be moved back until next year at least. It averts a race of comic Westerns, as MRC has a pretty firm spring start date on the Seth MacFarlane comic Western, A Million Ways To Die In The West, Amanda Seyfried and Charlize Theron also starring, with Universal the favorite to acquire the project.

Sandler’s Warner Bros project will come together quick; he’s eyeing a small group of actresses including his Wedding Singer and 50 First Dates costar Drew Barrymore for the female lead. The logline: After a disastrous blind date, Jim and Lauren find themselves, each with their kids from a previous marriage, stuck together in a resort for families. Despite everything they can do to resist, the attraction grows between the two, and their kids benefit from the growing relationship. The project has been at the studio since 2007, and the original script was written by Ivan Menchell and Clare Sera. Sandler is repped by WME and Brillstein’s Sandy Wernick. The writers are repped by Rain and Paradigm.

Josie Rosen will be exec producer on the pic.