Mike Fleming

EXCLUSIVE: Add Giovanni Ribisi to A Million Ways To Die In The West, the next film to star and be directed by Seth MacFarlane. Ribisi reteams with MacFarlane, who is once again teamed in this venture with Media Rights Capital, which finally rode in a big winner when it backed MacFarlane’s last film, Ted, the foul mouthed stuffed bear comedy that has now grossed over $543 million worldwide. Universal is expected to become the distributor of the Western, after releasing Ted. MacFarlane wrote the script with Ted and Family Guy cohorts Alec Sulkin and Wellesley Wild, and Scott Stuber and Jason Clark are producing. They were producers on Ted with MacFarlane and John Jacobs.

MacFarlane will play Albert, a not very good sheep farmer who chickens out of a duel and gets dumped by his girlfriend. Ribisi, who played a most peculiar stuffed bear-napper in Ted, is in talks to play MacFarlane’s character’s best friend Edward, a simple shoe repairman who bears up with a girlfriend who won’t have sex with him, but as a working prostitute she’s doing it with everybody else. He tried to get his buddy Albert back into the dating scene. Charlize Theron and Amanda Seyfried also star. Ribisi is repped by CAA, Management 360 and Stewart Brookman.