Seth Rogen, Bill Hader and Zach Galifianakis doing secretive sci-fi comedy

March 4th 2016, 5:15pm

Seth Rogen, Bill Hader and Zach Galifianakis are teaming up for an R-rated sci-fi comedy over at Universal that today the studio announced would be opening on Memorial Day Weekend of 2017, countering Disney's big franchise tentpole PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MEN TELL NO TALES. That's some major confidence in a movie that many will see as simply counter-programming.

However, the film serves as the directorial debut of Rodney Rothman who has been working his way through the comedy writing ranks for a number of years now. He started out as a writer on David Letterman's LATE SHOW before ascending to head writer within three years… and that was his first job of the sort. He's worked on UNDECLARED and COMMITTED. He was an executive producer on FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL. He was involved with GET HIM TO THE GREEK and 22 JUMP STREET, so there is a great deal of promise given his pedigree.

At one point the film was known as THE SOMETHING, but it looks like Universal is going with something else, given their note to call it UNTITLED ZACH GALIFIANAKIS/BILL HADER/SETH ROGEN R-RATED COMEDY right now, but, as Drew McWeeny reports, the premise rests "somewhere near the intersection of ALIEN, THE THING and DARK STAR."

As for the vagueness of this supposed astronaut comedy that Rogen, Hader and Galifianakis are involved with, HitFix lays out some of the plot for what is planned.

The film starts with an all-male crew of astronauts on a mining mission who have long since succumbed to basic space madness. They are miserable, their mission is a disaster, and they hate each other. They're on the verge of snapping when they suddenly encounter another American spaceship, this one on a very secretive mission, and the men decide to make contact with the other crew.

That might be exactly what audiences want during the summer – something different, something that's not a franchise, something that fits right into the same slot that made THE HANGOVER such a big hit in the past.

Someone's been paying attention.