Steve Carell seems to have gotten rather over-exictred about leaving The Office, as barely a day goes by without some new news on one of the films he’s planning to shoot once his TV commitments end. With a couple of new movie roles announced in the last week (Great Hope Springs and Dogs Of Babel), now THR reports that Charles McDougall has signed onto direct the New Line magic comedy Burt Wonderstone, which Carell is attached to star in.
The film is about on a popular Las Vegas magician who gets upstaged by a younger illusionist with more pizazz. He then must find a way to re-discover his love of magic once again. It’s a fairly basic premise, but there’s certainly room for a lot of fun if they get the screenplay write.
John Francis Daley and Jonathan M. Goldstein wrote the most recent version of the script, based on Chad Kultgen’s original draft, which New Line first acquired back in 2006. Daley and Goldstein and becoming quite an in-demand writing team in Hollywood, with Horrible Bosses and Of All The Things coming up. It’s difficult to know how Daley has the time to do it, in-between his day job as Dr. Sweets on Bones.
As well as The Office, McDougall has directed episodes of Parks and Recreation, The Tudors, and, most recently, the pilot episode of Fox’s new cop drama The Chicago Code.