‘Veep’ Creator Armando Iannucci’s Trump Twitter Joke Might Actually Become A Movie

Armando Iannucci swore he was ditching political comedy because Donald Trump has killed it, but in the words of Michael Corleone in the third Godfather, he keeps getting pulled back in. But in this case, it’s his fault.

The Veep creator — who just had an art house hit with him beyond grim comedy The Death of Stalin, and is hard at work on a space comedy for HBO with Hugh Laurie — took to Twitter with a random movie idea on Wednesday that involved Trump himself.

Who said political comedy is dead again? It’s like The Truman Show in which half the viewership hates the star!

But here’s the thing: Iannucci tweeted this Wednesday morning. By Thursday afternoon, Deadline was reporting that some big Hollywood power players were already in talks with the British comedy legend to turn what he was calling Fake America Great Again into a reality — which is to say a motion picture.

That was fast. Also impressive is that Iannucci had another, equally brilliant Trump joke within the same 24 hour period: What if you photoshopped pictures of Trump and replaced him with a penguin? Would the image still make sense?

Others proved that yes, they would:

Iannucci, one of the glowing lights of the British comedy scene, is also responsible for creating The Thick of It, the hyper-sweary British government show that inspired Veep, and he directed its hit spin-off movie In the Loop. He’s also a co-creator of Steve Coogan’s long-running character Alan Partridge. He left Veep as show-runner after the fourth season. If his Trump movie ever happens and he does return to the comedy genre he swore off, it will be the best fake retirement since Jay Z quit music in the mid-aughts.

(Via The A.V. Club)