A biopic about the life of the late “Saturday Night Live” star Chris Farley is in the works, IndieWire has confirmed.
Emmy-winner Paul Walter Hauser is attached to star as Farley, and Josh Gad would direct the project. “SNL” producer Lorne Michaels is producing the feature biopic via his Broadway Video production banner. Gad, the Broadway star and “Frozen” actor, would make his feature directorial debut on the film.
Right now the project is just at the package stage and being presented to interested buyers looking to make it, but it surely will be an in-demand package that could go quickly and make this movie a reality sooner rather than later. It also helps that the Farley family has given its blessing to the project.
The currently untitled film is based on “The Chris Farley Show: A Biography In Three Acts” written by Tom Farley Jr. and Tanner Colby that was originally published in 2008. Oscar and Emmy nominees Scott Neustadter & Michael H. Weber (“The Disaster Artist,” “Daisy Jones & The Six”) will write the screenplay.
Farley is an “SNL” icon having starred on the show for five seasons between 1990 and 1995. His boisterous and dexterous comedy style made him a legend on behalf of sketches like his “Van Down By the River” character Matt Foley or when he danced alongside Patrick Swayze as a Chippendales stripper. But some of our favorites are his “Chris Farley Show” talk show where he sheepishly interviewed legends like Paul McCartney, when he tried to warn us all about “El Nino,” or his ability to consistently make Adam Sandler lose it when he played Beverly Gelfand doing Zagat’s reviews.
Farley after “SNL” would find movie star success in films like “Tommy Boy” alongside David Spade, “Airheads,” and “Beverly Hills Ninja.” But his life was cut short at age 33 in 1997 when he died of a drug overdose after years of struggling with alcoholism and substance abuse even dating back to his early days as an actor at Chicago’s Second City.
For Hauser, he will lend his voice to Disney and Pixar’s “Inside Out 2” and will also appear opposite Matt Damon in the Apple project “The Instigators” from director Doug Liman. He’ll also be seen opposite Sydney Sweeney in “Americana” for Liosngate.
Hauser is represented by CAA, Artists First, The Lede Company, and Schreck Rose Dapello Adams Berlin & Dunham LLP. Gad is represented by CAA, Sugar 23, ImPRint, and Johnson Shapiro Slewett & Kole LLP. Farley and Colby are represented by Verve. Broadway Video is represented by CAA. Neustadter & Weber are represented by UTA and Kaplan/Perrone.
Deadline first reported the news.
