Six years ago, I passed along a bit of news about a TV show called Will, which would have centred on “an ordinary guy who lives in a world where people’s lives and destinies are being written by scribes in Heaven. The man wakes up one day to find that his heavenly writer has decided to no longer draft his life, and he must go about his day unscripted.”
The TV project was initially sold by actor-writer Demetri Martin (Taking Woodstock, Late Night with Conan O’Brien) to DreamWorks; then, two years ago, it became a movie project based at Paramount, with Paul Rudd and Zach Galifianakis attached to star. Most interestingly, the directors attached to the film were Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton, who eventually passed on the project and went on to direct Ruby Sparks — an imaginative film that explores free will in its own fantastical way.
Now comes word that another director might be taking a look at Will. Deadline reports that Michel Hazanavicius (pictured above), the Oscar-winning director of The Artist, has expressed interest in the film “and could do it after his next assignment, a pic about an NGO worker in Chechnya.”
Not much to go on there, but it does at least keep hope alive that someone, some day, might free Will from development hell.
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