Half Nelson writer/directors Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck’s new film It’s Kind of a Funny Story begins production in New York City this week.
Keir Gilchrist, who stars as the title character’s son on the hit television series United States of Tara, has the film’s lead role. Costarring are Zach Galifianakis (The Hangover), Emma Roberts (of the upcoming Valentine’s Day), Academy Award nominee Viola Davis (Doubt), Zoe Kravitz (The Brave One), Aasif Mandvi (The Proposal), Lauren Graham (of this winter’s NBC series Parenthood), and Jim Gaffigan (of Focus’ Away We Go).
Focus Features sent out a press release to announce the start of production, which can be read after the jump.
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Focus Features today announced their 2010 release slate. Highlights include:
- March 12th 2010: The Squid and the Whale writer/director Noah Baumbach’s Greenberg which stars Ben Stiller
- April 16th 2010: Thomas Balmès‘ Babies, a documentary film which simultaneously follows four babies around the world - from birth to first steps.
- Wednesday, September 1st 2010: Anton Corbijn’s The American starring George Clooney as a retiring assassin
- Third Quarter 2010: Kevin Macdonald’s Roman epic adventure The Eagle of the Ninth
- November 2010: Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck’s (Half Nelson, Sugar) dramedy adaptation of Ned Vizzini’s 2006 novel It’s Kind of a Funny Story
- TBA 2010 (we assume in December for Award Season): Sofia Coppola’s Somewhere starring Stephen Dorff and Elle Fanning
After the jump you can read the full press release, which includes detailed plot synopsis for all of these films.
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Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden are the sort of creative team you can’t help but love. The duo have given us such recent gems as Half Nelson and Sugar, so you can bet I’ve been keeping a close eye on their next project, a dramedy entitled It’s Kind of a Funny Story, based on the novel of the same name. We’ve previously reported the announcement of the project, as well as Zach Galifianakis’s involvement, and now we have the full cast list to share.
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Here’s a batch of casting news to tide you over until the next Page 2. Viola Davis, always a great actress and whose appearance in Doubt nearly owns the entire film, has taken two roles. One is in It’s Kind of a Funny Story, where she’ll work with…Zach Galifianakis? The film is about a depressed teen who checks himself into an adult psych ward. Davis will be his psychiatrist. If Galifianakis was playing the teen I’d be amazed, but that’s not likely to be the case.
The other film for Davis is Trust, which is not a remake of the great Hal Hartley film with the late Adrienne Shelley and Martin Donovan. Instead, this is David Schwimmer’s next directorial effort, in which a teen girl is ‘victimized by an adult who gained her trust posing as a teenager on a chat room.” Clive Owen and Catherine Keener are already in the cast; Davis will play a counselor. Watch out for that typecasting, Viola! [Variety] Read More »
It’s Kind of a Funny Story is the title of an upcoming Zach Galifianakis dramedy from the writer/director team behind Half Nelson and their rising gem Sugar. And in a way, the line also describes wild-man Nicolas Cage’s reasoning for recently bailing on the The Green Hornet. These tidbits of casting news after the jump…
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Like Half Nelson and Sugar before it, It’s Kind of a Funny Story is to be directed by Ryan Fleck and produced by Anna Boden from a screenplay that they wrote together. We knew the picture was in the works some time ago but The Hollywood Reporter is today announcing that Focus Features will “finance, produce and distribute” it. Of course, with the label ‘indie’ not in any way being related to independence, the film will ultimately be considered an ‘indie’ film. People sure do like that idea.
The Hollywood report lets us know that the film was previously being developed at Paramount, who appear to have placed it in turnaround, and is adapted from Ned Vizzini’s novel of the same name that was published by Miramax Books. Interestingly, the novel is described as being for “young adults,” suggesting a possible shift of target for Fleck and Boden from the very adult-oriented material of their first two films. And yes, I know one of the two key protagonists in Half Nelson was a kid. It doesn’t change a thing. That film was aimed clearly aimed at an adult audience.
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