Adam McKay, the director of Don’t Look Up, Vice, The Big Short, The Other Guys, Talladega Nights, Step Brothers, and the Anchorman movies, is pitching his next film to studios and streamers – and, as you would expect from a director with a line-up of credits like that, it looks like this one is going to have multiple A-listers in its cast as well. Robert Pattinson is attached to star, and Robert Downey Jr. is among the actors who could end up in the supporting cast. The film is called Average Height, Average Build, and while McKay describes it as a “political dramedy”, the lead character happens to be a serial killer.
UPDATE: Deadline adds that Amy Adams, Forest Whitaker, and Danielle Deadwyler are also up for roles.
Average Height, Average Build is said to be about a serial killer who gets into politics in an effort to change the laws to be more, well, murder-friendly.
More information: Pattinson will play a serial killer who enlists a lobbyist (Adams) to change laws that will allow him to get away with murder more easily. Downey Jr’s role is a retired cop who won’t give up on the murders, and the killer tries to prevent him from dogging his trail now that he’s hung up his gun. The serial killer turns himself into a cause celebre, a Mr. Smith Goes to Washington figure shielding his true motives.
The one issue that could end up holding the project back is its budget. Puck notes, “As with most McKay projects, the budget is high for a political dramedy, and despite the fact that his past three movies as a director have generated 17 total Oscar nominations, McKay hasn’t been a huge box office draw since he left studio comedies—though Don’t Look Up, starring tile-friendly Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence, is Netflix’s second most-watched movie of all time, with 360 million hours viewed. One executive who heard the pitch told me this week that he wanted to do it but then offered a version of, ‘In this economy?’ The McKay project will almost certainly land, probably at a streamer (though a Netflix source told me they’re not currently bidding). But it’s the same issue we saw with the $150 million Nancy Meyers rom-com, which still hasn’t found a home and likely would have been a pretty quick yes at Netflix just a short time ago. Now, after years of offering veritable blank checks to top creators, nearly everyone is thinking twice about the bigger, riskier swings—the kind that lead to home runs yet just as often lead to strike outs. You can pick your reason: The Great Netflix Correction; the expectation that Bob Iger is about to drop Mickey’s Cost-Cutting Ax at Disney; a seemingly inevitable writers strike; franchise-mania…“
Average Height, Average Build sounds interesting and will probably happen, it just hasn’t found a home yet. Hyperobject Industries’ McKay and Kevin Messick are producing, and they’re hoping to get the project into production by late summer of early fall.
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