Last July it was announced that Hugh Jackman was set to star in a movie called Avon Man, but since then we haven’t heard anything more about the movie. That’s now changed, as a Production Weekly tweet has told us that, “Kevin Lima will direct Hugh Jackman in the comedy Avon Man, scheduled to begin filming this April in Atlanta.”
Lima is a former animator who turned director for A Goofy Movie and Tarzan and then went live action and scored a big hit with Enchanted. However, since that movie was released in 2007, he’s been rumoured for and attached to an awful lot of films but never actually made anything else, although it now looks like he’s close to actually making another movie.
Avon Man itself is about a man who is laid off from a car dealership but is reluctantly recruited into becoming an Avon salesman. While he initially finds the experience emascualting, he uses his charm to become a top seller, before recruiting his out of work buddies into the business in order to win a regional contest.
20th Century Fox is behind the film, which does sound like it might be a nice charge of pace for Jackman, who’s brought humour to a lot of his roles but never done an out and out comedy. It’ll be interesting to see if he can pull it off.