Seth Rogen has been laying a bit low — acting-wise, at least — for the last couple years. The performer and filmmaker hasn’t had a starring role in a big movie since 2016’s Neighbors 2: Sorority Uprising, although his voice was front and center in the raunchy animated comedy Sausage Party, also from that year. So it’s only appropriate that one of his next films is about a man who is asleep for a century before returning to a world that’s completely different. It’s kind of like Rip Van Winkle, only it involves a man being pickled.
Variety is reporting that Rogen has signed with Sony to make an as-yet-untitled movie in which he’ll play a pickle maker in 1918 who falls into a vat of pickles and is, well, pickled. When he’s awakened, he finds himself in 2018, which makes even less sense to him than it does to those of us already here.
The buried lede here is that Rogen, who will start shooting the film next month, is reuniting with Sony. You may remember Rogen inadvertently caused a ton of headaches for them in 2014. It was four years ago that he and his longtime writing/producing/directing partner Evan Goldberg made The Interview, a comedy in which Rogen and James Franco play men who are tasked with assassinating Kim Jong-un during a trip to North Korea.
The Interview nearly caused an international incident with the Democratic Republic, and it led to a mysterious group called “Guardians of Peace” hacking into Sony’s server and releasing numerous e-mails to the world, causing a number of scandals. (Just one: One showed mega-producer Scott Rudin calling Angelina Jolie a “minimally talented spoiled brat.”) North Korea denied being affiliated with the hacker group.
Rogen has stated he’s never felt guilty for the hack. Still, Sony did reunite with Rogen two years later for Sausage Party, so the water is especially under the bridge, it looks like. Rogen will be seen playing lead in next year’s Flarsky, from his 50/50 and The Night Before director Jonathan Levine, in which he’ll play an unemployed journalist.
He’ll also be voicing Pumbaa in Jon Favreau’s The Lion King. He’s been busy the last couple years producing movies like Blockers, spearheading a revival of American Gladiators, and giving scene-stealing supporting turns in The Disaster Artist, his pal Franco’s movie about Tommy Wiseau’s The Room, and in the Netflix movie Like Father, starring Kristen Bell and Kelsey Grammer. He’s also humiliated Paul Ryan in front of his kids, which is impressive, too.
(via Variety)
