Quick refresher:
- Will Ferrell is making a six-part, multi-generational, century-spanning miniseries for IFC titled The Spoils of Babylon, and will play the fictional author of the books the series is supposedly based on.
- Kristen Wiig and Tobey Maguire will star as a sister and adopted brother who “go on to run Morehouse Enterprises, the seventh largest company in the world, together while fighting their feelings for each other.”
- It sounds incredibly ambitious and/or insane, and I think I already love it.
Which brings us today, and IFC’s announcement that the cast will also include Jessica Alba, Tim Robbins, and Val Kilmer, among others. The network also released a much more in-depth summary of the plot, and although I generally try to avoid blockquoting entire press releases on principle, I am going to make an exception here because I honestly don’t even know how I’d begin to boil it all down to three or four sentences. Just read it.
Jessica Alba, Val Kilmer, Tobey Maguire, Haley Joel Osment, Michael Sheen, Tim Robbins and Kristen Wiig are confirmed to join Will Ferrell in IFC’s new original comedy, The Spoils of Babylon. A parody of epic television mini-series, The Spoils of Babylon is produced by Funny or Die and executive produced by Ferrell, Adam McKay, Matt Piedmont, Andrew Steele and Nate Young. Steele and Piedmont created and wrote the series, and Piedmont will direct. Production began June 2 in Los Angeles. Six, half-hour episodes will premiere on IFC in early 2014.
“This amazingly talented cast will give this decadent genre its due respect,” said Jennifer Caserta, president and general manager of IFC. “Never before has a parody of a mini-series been more poised for showers of accolades.”
The Spoils of Babylon is a television adaptation of a best-selling epic novel by fictional famous author Eric Jonrosh (Ferrell) whose library spans 57 best sellers in 85 different languages. Jonrosh’s other titles include: The Spoils of Galaxy 7, The Spoils of Grasping for God, The Spoils of the Sahara, The Spoils of the Singing Night Squirrel, The Spoils of the Weeping Falcon, and The Spoils Beneath the Sea.
“I’m thrilled my masterwork is finally making it to the screen, albeit the small screen. Although I guess these days people have pretty big screens in their homes but still not as big as “the big screen.” I mean, some people who have home theaters might have screens that big, but most wouldn’t, at least that’s what I would imagine. Still, I’m thrilled, and I personally DO have a giant screen TV so….” trailed off Jonrosh in a quote that was dictated over the phone from his yacht The Super Bard, anchored off his personal island in the Caspian Sea.
The Spoils of Babylon, a century-spanning saga, chronicles the sexy and dramatic lives of the Morehouse family, led by Jonas Morehouse (Robbins), his daughter Cynthia (Wiig) and her adopted brother Devon (Maguire) who made their fortune in the oil business. The series takes viewers from the oil fields of Texas to boardrooms in New York City, through war torn battlefields and velvet-sheeted bedrooms.
Cynthia and Devon’s unbridled and taboo passion for one another cannot be prevented. Add in Cynthia’s evil son Winston (Osment), her put upon husband Chet Halner (Sheen), and Devon’s new love interest Dixie Mellonworth (Alba), and the booze, the pills, more passion, more pills and the heartache, and you have a mercurial potboiler. Then add in illegal arms deals, international espionage, the Shah of Iran (Ferrell), and two US Army Generals (Kilmer, Steve Tom) and it begins to overflow with boiling liquid in a pot on a hot stove that is operational.
Give me this now.
