Directors Once Again Confirm That Benicio Del Toro Is Still In The Casting Mix
So, Cher playing a nun who terrorizes the the titular three Stooges in the Farrelly Brothers‘ big screen take on the comedy trio? After her Twitter outburst after failing to secure any Oscar nominations, we believe it.
In an interview with the LA Times the directing duo reveal that they would like to cast the singer/actress in the film, and it’s not as outrageous an idea as you might think. The brothers previously worked with Cher on 2003’s “Stuck On You” where she played herself and they are clearly in awe of her with Peter telling the LAT, “Cher is just the coolest chick ever. It’s hard to describe. You meet a lot of celebrities in our business. We’re not cowed by many of them. But Cher is bawdy, she’s fun, she’s cool, she’s lived a life, she’s got experience, she’s humble. It’s the humility that struck me the most. She’s not really a diva.”
But as for who will play the actual Stooges, it’s still a guessing game at this point. While Andy Samberg and Johnny Knoxville were mentioned early on — and the kind of, sort of ruled out — the directors play cagey saying they like both actors, but that they are seeking the right approach that balances the new and the old for the actors taking on the iconic roles. “When you create a character, if someone goes off one way or another, you welcome that. But these guys are caught in a box. They must do it a certain way, and they also need to find a newness to it. It’s a tricky thing,” Peter said. “And there are some great actors who can be funny and have great comic timing but they can’t be physical. We need athletes on top of everything else.”
As for Benicio Del Toro — attached for the role of Moe back in the early stages of the project when it had Sean Penn and Jim Carrey also linked — the Farrellys continue to posit that he’s still a contender.
With plans to start shooting in April, the Farrellys will need to lock down their cast soon. The ambitious project will drop the Stooges in the modern era, in a PG film that will be told in three interconnected, short films. The plan will also find the directors recreating classic gags, but re-interpreting them and re-contextualizing them a contemporary setting. We’re kind of curious to see how a nose twist and a first to the top of the skull gets a modern makeover. At any rate, the directors feel that with a budget in place and some better material they can advance the trio for today’s audiences. “The Stooges themselves, we can’t beat. But I think we can beat the material. And it’s because they didn’t have a budget. We don’t have a huge budget, but they didn’t have anything. They were working on nothing. They were creating something out of thin air to put in the present day and put in the real world; updating it allows us to be better than they were,” Peter said.
At any rate, it seems like a passion project for these guys and their eagerness in talking about it certainly attests to that. We’re curious to see who this cast will finally take shape, and with the start date looming, we imagine we’ll find out soon enough.
