Key & Peele Turning A Sketch Into A Film

Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele have been slowly making their presence felt in movie roles, but their eponymous sketch show for America’s Comedy Central is where they’ve really been making waves, with popular characters and memorable moments generating plenty of attention. Now Paramount wants to turn one of their more successful characters – Key’s tough-minded but deluded substitute teacher Mr. Garvey – into a film.

The sketches, which have been a viral sensation on YouTube{ =nofollow}, see the inner city substitute teacher taking on a class of largely white, suburban students and refuses to take any of the guff he assumes they’re going to give him. Whether the concept can extend to a film remains to be seen, but regular Key & Peele writers Rich Talarico and Alex Rubens are writing the script, which will see Peele as a rival teacher who tries to become the students’ favourite. Shawn Levy’s 21 Laps company is producing alongside Key and Peele themselves.

And the comedians have other projects on the go too, including a reboot of the Police Academy franchise that has been in the works for a long time and Keanu, the tale of two friends who go undercover as drug dealers to infiltrate the criminal world and retrieve a stolen cat. The film, which New Line has acquired, boasts as script from Key and Rubens and should be shooting in the spring.