Nia Long Heads For Keanu

Jason Mitchell also aboard the Key & Peele comedy film

Nia-Long-Keanu

by James White |
Published on

Comedy duo Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele are bringing their humour to the big screen in more concentrated fashion with oddball comedy Keanu. They’ve rounded up a fair ensemble already and are now adding Nia Long and Jason Mitchell.

The pair, whose Key & Peele show regularly has spawned several viral videos while doing good business on US TV’s Comedy Central, is behind the new idea, which Peele wrote with Alex Ruben. The story, nothing – one assumes, at least – to do with the** John Wick** star, finds the duo as part of a group of friends who must retrieve a stolen cat. But instead of heading to the police station, they pose as gangsters and drug dealers, because that’s apparently how you should really try to find stolen pets or anything else. We’re fairly certain that plotline was in an early draft of Paddington.

Long is apparently set as the wife of Key’s character – which is strange, as previous reports had Gabrielle Union playing that role. Perhaps there has been a scheduling snafu, or Union is taking another part in the film. Mitchell, meanwhile, is in an unspecified role{ =nofollow}. They Join Will Forte, Nadiyah Skyy Taylor, Darrell Britt-Gibson and Method Man in the cast for the comedy, which director Peter Atencio is now shooting in New Orleans. Keanu will be out in the US on April 22 next year, but has yet to schedule a UK date.

Long is currently working on the TV reboot of 1989 John Hughes comedy Uncle Buck, which is scheduled to arrive on US screens this autumn. Mitchell is playing Eazy-E in NWA biopic Straight Outta Compton, set for release in the UK on August 28.

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