'Swear To God' Cast Shuffle Brings Steve Carell Alongside Will Ferrell
by Sean Comer
The deck has been shuffled on Will Ferrell's 2013 comedy "Swear to God," but the rearranging looks to have the sum of the parts coming out ahead, Deadline reports.
The best possible news, is that "Anchorman 2" won't be the only project rejoining Ferrell and Steve "Brick Tamland" Carell. With little else known, Carell will perform alongside Ferrell's portrayal of a hedge fund manager who has apparently had a face-to-face encounter with God.
To go sarcastically inside baseball a bit, let's remember Carell is currently batting .500 in movies with premises resembling this one, helping Jim Carrey smack one out of the park in "Bruce Almighty" and taking an equivalent fastball to the nuts with the unremarkable "Evan Almighty."
OK, kids. Get ready for the "What Would've Been?" Game. Once upon a time, Ferrell was set to collaborate alongside his "Anchorman"/"The Other Guys"/"Step Brothers" director and writer Adam McKay. Well, the Comedy Gods don't always let us have it all. McKay is apparently out.
On the other hand, the pair will now work with a director who can shake up the tried, true, but sometimes by-the-numbers Ferrell formula.
Instead, the project is now to be scripted and directed by Justin Theroux, best known as much for co-writing "Tropic Thunder" and "Iron Man 2" as for his performances in front of the camera in "Mulholland Drive", "American Psycho" and more recently, Paul Rudd and Jennifer Aniston's "Wanderlust."
Make no mistake, Ferrell and McKay have fantastic collaborator chemistry between writer-director and performer. That can make for tremendous consistency and some performers being guaranteed a wellspring of work.
Still, there are times it can feel as though if you've seen one product of the two's styles, you've seen 'em all. Ferrell's talent sometimes shows through even more brilliantly when he's challenged by a less familiar environment or an uncharted collaborator or two, such as acting opposite Emma Thompson in "Stranger Than Fiction" or Matthew Broderick and Nathan Lane in "The Producers."