Natalie Portman will star alongside Danny McBride and James Franco in their new period stoner comedy, Your Highness, to be directed by Pineapple Express’ David Gordon Green.
Portman will play a warrior princess who becomes a love interest for McBride’s character, a lazy prince who must team up with his brother (Franco) to rescue his kingdom and the brother’s fiancée.
Now, we love us some Danny McBride here at Empire, but a movie that pairs him romantically with Portman, arguably the most beautiful woman on the planet just has to be a comedy. And hopefully, a damn funny one, too. After all, McBride co-wrote it with Ben Best, his co-writer on The Foot Fist Way and the HBO series, Eastbound and Down, so the signs are good. And that’s without even considering the Pineapple Express connection…
But Portman’s casting is an intriguing one. Most of the 27 year-old actress’ films are so excruciatingly po-faced that they’d even make a clown disappear to his garage for some special alone time, but she has discovered her funnybone recently, partially with Zach Braff’s Garden State, but mostly thanks to her stint on SNL, notably the Lazy Sunday rap with Andy Samberg’s Lonely Island troupe.
And clearly, **Your Highness **is part of a concerted campaign to lighten up and show the world that a Natalie Portman film need not be more depressing than looking at GM’s balance sheet. And frankly, we can’t wait – not just because the prospect of Portman playing a warrior princess makes us feel all kinds of funny inside, but because her role might be a rarity in the Frat Pack’s output: a decent part for a lady. Stop sniggering at the back, you.
Universal is stumping up the cash for Your Highness, while shooting starts in July in Ireland, so it does, so it does.