Once upon a time, Bobby and Peter Farrelly were planning a biopic of The Three Stooges and put together the seemingly dynamite cast of Jim Carrey, Sean Penn and Benicio Del Toro to star in it. However a series of delays and problems meant all three gradually left, and the film seemed dead in the water due to the financial woes of MGM.
Then last month all that changed with it moved to 20th Century Fox and a March shoot date was announced. The big problem though it that it has no cast, so since then the directing brothers have been busy putting together a shortlist. The Wrap has been speaking to one of those shadowy agency insiders film sites so love and discovered that Johnny Knoxville, Saturday Night Live star Andy Samberg and Australian comic Shane Jacobson are on the shortlist to play Moe, Larry and Curly, respectively.
They’re very different to Carrey, Penn and Del Toro, and suggest that with Fox now behind the project, they’re pushing for a cast that screams comedy, rather than the slightly more serious feel of the previous trio. Nothing has yet been confirmed, and it’s not known if other actors are still on the shortlist, but ‘advances have been made, representatives have been approached and discussions have taken place.’
It’ll certainly be an interesting biopic, with the plan being to do it in the style of three back-to-back slapstick shorts, which tell the Stooges story, but with non-stop silliness, following them from newborns at the door of an orphanage, to their adult life as comedy greats.