What do you do if you’re a studio with a project set up around one of the biggest comedy talents of the moment and the director suddenly drops out? If you’re New Line, the film is Tammy co-written by and starring Melissa McCarthy, you hand it to your star to direct instead.
Actually, co-direct is a better term, as McCarthy and husband/writing partner Ben Falcone (you might remember him best as the Air Marshal she seduces in Bridesmaids) are now behind the camera after Beth McCarthy-Miller dropped out due to scheduling. Unwilling to lose the momentum on the film, New Line decided to let McCarthy and Falcone take the reigns.
McCarthy will also co-star with Shirley MacLaine in the tale of a woman who loses her job and discovers her husband is a cheater on the same day. Looking to get away from it all for a while, she hits the road with her profane, booze-guzzling grandmother.
That’s not the only movie McCarthy has in the works, as she and Falcone have launched a production company called On The Day to develop other ideas. They already have Michelle Darnell, a character piece for the actress to play set up at Universal. The studio is also producing** Cousin Irv From Mars**, which is based on an upcoming book by Bruce Eric Kaplan.
Then there’s Fox, which is adapting the self-help book Just Do It: How One Couple Turned Off the TV and Turned On Their Sex Lives for 101 Days (No Excuses!) which follows how… Look, you can figure that one out from the title, can’t you?
McCarthy is back on our screens next month with** Identity Thief** (set for March 22) and then T****he Heat, which finds her in a mismatched buddy cop duo with Sandra Bullock, arrives on July 31.