Josh Hutcherson’s had a weird time of it in Hollywood. Sure, Jennifer Lawrence’s Katniss “chose” him at the end of The Hunger Games franchise. But it was a reluctant sort of half-choice, the kind of choice you make when you’re really, really tired and have just spent years leading a resistance against a murderous dictatorship and you’re really craving McDonald’s fries but you’re like, if there’s no McDonald’s nearby we can just do Burger King, it’s fine.
The rest of Hutcherson’s career has been marked by a few good films — The Kids Are All Right, those ol’ Hunger Games — and a lot of weird/bad films, i.e., Journey 2: The Mysterious Island, Red Dawn, and something called Miracle Dogs? In other words, despite starring in one of the most massive franchises this side of the Bible, Hutcherson has a touch of the Taylor Lautner syndrome, having not yet fully found his footing in the film biz. Perhaps he’ll fare better on TV: Deadline reports that Hutcherson is set to star in Future Man, Hulu’s half-hour comedy pilot from the deranged minds of Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg.
Rogen and Goldberg — who’ve previously brought us Super Bad, Pineapple Express, This Is The End, and The Interview — will executive produce and direct the series, described as a “high-concept comedy.” Written by Kyle Hunter and Ariel Shaffir, Future Man centers on another dude named Josh just trying to find his place in the world: Josh Futterman, a “janitor by day/world-ranked gamer by night who is tasked with preventing the extinction of humans after mysterious visitors from the future proclaim him the key to defeating the imminent super-race invasion.”
Variety has a few more details about the plot: Apparently, Josh is still living at home with his parents, and his janitorial work takes place at a “sexual disease research center.” Understandably, after cleaning up diseased sexual fluids all day, Josh is “socially inept,” an insecure guy who’s terrified of women but really good at video games, as men so often are. He’s particularly adept at Cybergeddon, a game “set in a dystopian future where his character, Future Man, has the top ranking in the world.” When Josh finally beats the game, he’s “visited by characters from the game who claim it’s been his training manual and he’s been selected to travel back in time and help them save the world.”
There’s no premiere date set for Future Man yet, but in the meantime, Hutcherson has a few potentially solid films lined up: James Franco’s In Dubious Battle, James Franco’s The Disaster Artist (I’m sensing a pattern here), and James Franco’s The Long Home (okay, what is going on here?).
