The Hollywood Reporter brings news of a topical new comedy shtick from funnymen Adam Sandler and Kevin James. It’s the sitcommy story of a pair of straight firemen who pose as gay lovers in order to get married and share the benefits of such a union.
"Adam Sandler and Kevin James are in negotiations to play firefighters who pretend to be a gay couple in Universal Pictures "I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry."
"Wedding Crashers" helmer David Dobkin is attached to direct the long-gestating comedy … The firefighters in "Chuck and Larry" pose as a married gay couple in order to receive domestic partner benefits. Alexander Payne and James Taylor, the Oscar-winning team behind "Sideways" and "About Schmidt," have written the current draft of the screenplay based on a treatment by Lew Gallo.
The coming together of Sandler and James finally puts the project, which has been at the studio since the late 1990s, on the runway. A parade of writers including Gary Ross, Jon Favreau and Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel has hammered out drafts over the years, and various combinations of actors such as Will Smith and Nicolas Cage, Smith and James Gandolfini and Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson have flirted with the movie."
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Frankly I think it’d be a little more brave to have a comedy in which the characters are actually gay men who want to be married … ha, like a studio would actually bankroll that concept.
Normally I’d snidely and snobbishly scoff at such a high-concept blueprint like this one, but with Dobkin, Payne, and Taylor aboard … I’m more than prepared to see how this thing shakes out.
