Anyone with more than a passing interest in Judd Apatow's career will note how there's a curious call-back to one of Apatow's earlier works in this most recent of his productions, with the credits for Step Brothers in the exact same scrawled, stretched-out font as his comedy Freaks and Geeks. Freaks and Geeks, though, featured teens who often spoke and acted like adults; Step Brothers features adults who constantly speak and act like children.

The credit-font's evocation of an earlier Apatow work is an omen for the rest of Step Brothers, in fact, with Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly recycling and amplifying their rivalry from Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (also directed by Step Brothers helmer Adam McKay) but without that film's plot structure, surreal wit or inspired mockery (and celebration) of NASCAR culture; instead, Step Brothers seems constructed -- or, rather, contrived -- solely to create a circumstance where Ferrell and Reilly can act like idiot man-children and riff to their great amusement. That, however, is not the same thing as riffing to the amusement of the audience. ...

The Foot Fist Way premiered at Sundance in 2006. I got my hands on a copy about a year ago, and wondered why it never got a big cross-country release. I knew it was a hit among big-time comedy folk (your Stillers, your Apatows, your Oswalts), and I started to figure that maybe they just wanted to keep it to themselves. But with a big push from Will Ferrell and Adam McKay, Foot Fist has found its way into theaters. Shot independently over nineteen days for little money in North Carolina, the film is a character study about a character you'd never want to meet -- Fred Simmons.

Danny McBride plays Simmons, an unbalanced children's Tae Kwon Do instructor who goes completely off the rails when his wife (the very funny Mary Jane Bostic) cheats on him. Fred is obsessed with karate master and low-budget film star Chuck "The Truck" Wallace (Ben Best), and tries to focus his energies on bringing his hero to the school. That's about it for a plot, much of the film consists of quasi-connected short scenes and moments that feel quite a bit like sketches. A genuinely hilarious scene early on involving an elderly woman, for example, is a self-contained jewel (I actually choked on soda watching it), and would be an internet sensation if this film had never existed.

The juxtaposition of a deranged man and young children is a comedy staple going back (at least) to W.C. Fields, but since this is an indie flick, things go darker than you might expect. Simmons is not a likable man, not at all really, and McBride's resistance to give him a big heart makes him feel a lot more authentic than a lot of the "heroes" in major studio comedies today. Sometimes a dick is just a dick.

Back in March, Judd Apatow talked about how Will Ferrell's Ron Burgandy was the character best suited for a sequel. However, he suggested that this idea would happen in 30 years time, showing Ron as a 70-year-old anchor. Now I wonder if this was just a ploy to get buzz going, because it seems that this potential sequel is a little closer to reality. Collider talked with Anchorman's writer/director Adam McKay, and he says we won't have to wait three decades.

McKay says, "I might do this other movie called Channel 3 Billion, which is kind of this science fiction/Brazil-type comedy. Then after that, Will and I are like let's do Anchorman 2, so you're talking like years, maybe we'll do it. But we're going to do it, for sure." Collider asked if this was 100%, and McKay responded: "Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're dying to do it. Unless we can't get the cast together, which is always kind of a tricky thing. But, I think, with that cast we're all friends, so yeah, we want to do it."

Personally, I was hoping for more teeny tyke landlords, but this could definitely be fun. What do you think?

When I told a friend of mine that I was heading to a screening of Baby Mama, he immediately replied: "Oh, the Saturday Night Live movie?" Hmm -- well, sort of. The comedy -- which premiered at Tribeca and goes wide this weekend -- was produced by SNL honcho Lorne Michaels, and stars show veterans Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. On the other hand, it's not based on an SNL sketch, and doesn't feature any characters from the show.

Baby Mama's pre-release reputation as a "Saturday Night Live movie" probably isn't helpful: movies falling into that category don't have the best track record in the minds of people who pay attention. At the same time, the show has contributed a lot to the movies, mostly in its capacity as a breeding ground for comedic talent. This installment of Cinematical Seven collects films with an SNL connection that have actually been good, or in some way significant. I limited the pool to the last ten years; we all know that The Blues Brothers and Wayne's World are classics that started out as SNL sketches, but what has the show done for us lately?

I like Will Ferrell as much as the next girl, but I don't think I like him enough to drop $47,100. The Hollywood Reporter tells us a winner has emerged in the auction for a cameo role in Ferrell's next film, Step Brothers. Erik had first reported on the auction last week, and just in case you are wondering, this isn't just a shameless cash grab -- Uwe Boll; I'm looking in your direction. All of the proceeds from the auction are going to a charitable organization called the Cancer for College foundation. The charity is run by Ferrell's former fraternity buddy, who is a two-time survivor of Hodgkin's Disease.

So who was willing to drop almost fifty grand for the part of 'Guy in Bathroom Stall #2'?. The winning bid came from an anonymous bidder in Texas who was bidding on behalf of his son. The bidder told THR, "I lost my mother to ovarian cancer a few years ago so I feel fortunate that my 10-year-old and I are able to participate in an event involving Cancer for College and Will Ferrell. It's a great opportunity for him to both hang out with 'Ricky Bobby' and learn a valuable life lesson -- that it's important to help people who need help by whatever means you are able to do so". Step Brothers is the latest collaboration for Ferrell and Adam McKay with Judd Apatow producing. The film stars Ferrell and John C. Reilly as two ultra-competitive step-brothers vying for their parents affection. Brothers is currently still in production, but is scheduled for release on July 25th, 2008.

It's been quite awhile since we first and last heard about Adam McKay's Step Brothers, an R-rated comedy that will reunite the director's Talladega Nights duo, Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly (cementing Reilly's placement in the "Frat Pack") and will be overseen by that film's producers, Judd Apatow and Jimmy Miller. Joining the leads, according to The Hollywood Reporter, is Adam Scott, who recently played the male nurse in Apatow's Knocked Up and Oscar-winner Mary Steenburgen, who co-starred with Ferrell in Elf.

In Step Brothers, Ferrell and Reilly play -- what a shocker -- immature guys who become stepbrothers and best friends when their parents marry. Scott has been cast as Ferrell's younger, more successful brother and Steenburgen is their mom. Still no word on who plays Reilly's father, who I assume will be marrying Steenburgen's character. Other cast members reportedly include Andrea Savage (Comedy Central's Dog Bites Man) as Ferrell's therapist, and someone named Katherine Hahn (could it be Knocked Up costumer Catherine Hahn?) as Adam Scott's character's wife.

Steenburgen seems way too young to play mother to Will Ferrell, who is only 14 years her junior, but this won't be the first time such close-age parental casting has occurred (the craziest was Angela Lansbury and Laurence Harvey -- two years apart -- in The Manchurian Candidate). Still, the actress is one of my favorite motherly actresses, mainly thanks to Parenthood and even Back to the Future III -- her schoolmarm character seems like a mom even if she isn't, at least not until the animated series. Now if Apatow could just get her Parenthood husband, Steve Martin, to play Ferrell's step-dad, I could really get behind this movie. Apatow could be just the guy to re-boost Martin's once-funny career.

What I always thought what made Will Ferrell so funny was how committed he was to creating characters who were totally oblivious to how the rest of the world saw them, with Buddy The Elf and Ron Burgundy standing out as some of his best. I even thought he was one of the best things about Melinda and Melinda because he is among the few actors in a Woody Allen movie that wasn't determined to play Woody Allen. For Ferrell it never seemed to be about about profanity, it was about absurdity.

In an interview with Suicide Girls director Adam McKay he confirmed that his next project with Ferrell and John C. Reilly is not concerned with what he calls the "PG-13 Game" and instead is aiming for a solid R rating for their upcoming comedy Step Brothers. Since most Will Ferrell films read like an improv session anyway, it shouldn't be a surprise that so far the project consists of an outline and about 25 pages of a shooting script, but McKay says, "We're not stopping language or nudity. Already there are a couple jokes that have nudity and just 25 pages into it we've already said F*ck about seven times". The project is set to go into production this July, so we'll have to wait and see if working blue is the key to success for the trio.

[via Dark Horizons]

As an actor, Will Ferrell obviously came to terms with his inner dork some time ago, so there was no small amount of irony involved when his production company recently acquired the film rights to King Dork, the debut novel from Frank Portman. The book, which came out this past April, is the story of a high school student and song-writer named Tom Henderson whose life is changed when he finds and reads his late father's copy of Catcher in the Rye.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Gary Sanchez, the apparently fictitious financial backer and spiritual leader of Will Ferrell and Adam McKay's Gary Sanchez Productions had this to say: "Chris and Adam assured me this book, once turned into a movie, will make $500 million domestic. If it does not, I will hit each of their hands with a hammer." Tough talk for a make believe mogul. The agreement is part of Ferrell and McKay's two-year, first-look deal with Paramount Vantage that was reported on by Cinematical's own Martha Fischer back in June.

Ferrell is, of course, a former Saturday Night Live cast member and the star of several successful comedies, the most recent of which is Stranger Than Fiction. His partner Adam McKay was the writer and director of the Will Ferrell vehicles Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby and Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy. The two will produce King Dork, with Chris Henchy overseeing on behalf of Gary Sanchez Productions.

[Via Moviehole]

Entourage writer/Brooke Shields hubby Chris Henchy just got a major promotion: He's been brought on board by Adam McKay and Will Ferrell as a senior producer for their Gary Sanchez Productions. (For the civilians among us, that means that he'll "help develop and produce projects" for the company.) While Henchy does have prior production experience, that experience is limited to television, where he has spent the bulk of his career. In addition to filling various producing capacities for Spin City (a secret guilty pleasure for me), Battery Park, Life with Bonnie and I'm with Her, Henchy also wrote for some of those shows before moving on to his current Entourage gig.

Prior to this deal, Henchy, McKay and Ferrell already had a professional connection: Henchy is writing the screenplay (his first work for the big screen) for Land of the Lost, a(nother) TV-show-turned-movie flick that McKay is directing, and in which Farrell is likely to star.

Check this out: Even before Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby hit theaters, Columbia Pictures was already so in love with the men behind it that, based only on a pitch, they threw a huge pile of money at them yesterday. The pitch was for a comedy called Step Brothers, which will be directed by Adam McKay from a script he'll write with Will Ferrell. Yes, that sentence also describes both Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy and Talladega Nights, which goes a long way towards explaining Columbia's eagerness to lock the project up before anyone else even saw it.

And the Talladega Nights connection goes even further: Step Brothers will star Ferrell and John C. Reilly as "coddled guys who live with their respective single parents. Their folks fall in love and marry, making the guys stepbrothers." In case you're been under a rock for the post month or so, that duo just happens to star in Talladega Nights, as well. Gee, think Columbia is excited about the movie?

In addition to signing the duo for Step Brothers, the studio also already agreed to salaries for its stars and director; production is scheduled to begin next summer.