Now that he’s officially finished work on his last few episodes of The Office, Steve Carell is starting to think seriously about the film opportunities ahead of him. But though he has a crammed schedule of comedies and other movies in development, he’s apparently plumped for a previously unknown option, signing on to star in Lorene Scafaria’s Seeking a Friend for the End of the World.
According to Deadline, Keira Knightley is also close to joining the film, which will find the human race facing the very real fact that an incoming asteroid will wipe us from the face of the Earth.
Carell will play a man whose wife suddenly leaves, panicked about the end of the world, but consoled by an old flame, who contacts him to ask if he’ll be with her when the world comes to an explosive end. Except his trip is complicated by his neighbour (Knightley) coming along for the ride and the pair ending up falling for each other.
It sounds to us like a slightly funnier version of Don McKellar’s excellent 1998 doomsday drama Last Night and while we’re not sure we see the Carell/Knightley pairing as a likely one, it is the end of the world, after all…
Scafaria wrote the script for Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, and will make Seeking A Friend as her directorial debut.