Now that Chris Pratt has turned down the Uncharted adaptation and Parks and Recreation is filming its final two episodes, he’s going to have a lot more free time to star in blockbuster movies. Well, when he’s not busy with sequels to Guardians Of The Galaxy, Jurassic World, and The LEGO Movie. Wow, he’s like the new Sam Worthington, but with a personality.
And now we know one new project Chris Pratt is purportedly working on. Collider reports he’ll star as the titular Cowboy Ninja Viking in Cowboy Ninja Viking, which is a real thing that exists (and a surprisingly good comic, in spite of the “OMG ALL THE MEMES” style of title). The script comes from Zombieland writers Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese, although Marc Forster (World War Z) is no longer directing.
So how is Douchemaster McChest going to be playing a cowboy, a ninja, and a viking? In the comic, he’s Duncan, a guy with Multiple Personality Disorder who’s part of a counter-intelligence unit comprised entirely of Multiple Personality patients, called “Triplets”. Duncan’s personalities are channeled into the rather cool cowboy/ninja/viking trichotomy, while some of his cohorts aren’t so lucky, with one of them being an Applebee’s Waiter/Army Sergent/Frontiersman, another being an Executioner/Sports Broadcaster/Samurai and another being a Hitman/Navy Seal/Roadie for Dokken. When the project inevitably falls apart, his fellow agents become hired killers, and Duncan is trying to find them and the billionaire who created the program.
His personalities interact with each other, which the comic handles deftly with visual cues (including outlines of their iconic weapons in the edge of dialogue bubbles, as seen in the panel below), but how will the movie handle these distinct characters? Collider explains:
We’re told that per the latest draft of the script, the three different personalities (the Cowboy, the Ninja, and the Viking) physically manifest onscreen as three different people when Duncan switches personas, but to onlookers he still just looks like Duncan (ie. Pratt). It’s possible that the film could be executed this way, with three different actors playing the protagonist’s manifestations while Pratt plays Duncan, but obviously the script and/or vision may evolve once a director comes onboard.
We’re hoping Pratt plays all three, Burt Macklin style. And however they decide to film it, we’ll be there in the theater to look around and get out our f*cking umbrella.