I’ve been thinking a lot about screenwriters recently because I’ll be helping a friend do a reading in March and any time I hear that a writer or a writing team has landed a deal, I give a little cheer because I know how hard it is to create new stories for a jaded audience.
I’m not sure how much this applies to writers Michael Diliberti and Matthew Sullivan who sold their script L.A. P.I. to Rough House, the production company set up by actor Danny McBride and his collaborators Jody Hill (director of Observe and Report) and David Gordon Green (director of Pineapple Express and Your Highness, which also stars McBride).
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Hill will direct and McBride will star as a private investigator in L.A.—obviously—but almost every other detail about the plot is being kept tightly under wrap.
I can’t decide whether or not this is a good move as when you think about Los Angeles and fictional private detectives, you think about Phillip Marlowe or Jim Rockford, right? Also, the film is being described as an action-comedy, which I think means there’s going to be less sleuthing and more antics, which as a fan of the detective genre I’m not sure I can fully support.
This isn’t the first deal for Diliberti and Sullivan, as they’ve been tasked with re-adapting Brewster’s Millions for Warner Bros., and according to IMDBPro, their first script Comic Con has an option out on it, but doesn’t state which studio has it.