Kate Beckinsale, Jason Sudeikis Part Of Big-Name Ensemble Cast Nearing Deals For Charlie Day’s ‘El Tonto’ (original) (raw)

EXCLUSIVE: Kate Beckinsale, Jason Sudeikis, Edie Falco, John Malkovich and Jillian Bell are closing deals to join Charlie Day‘s feature directorial debut El Tonto which starts shooting this month in Los Angeles.

The Armory Films and Metalworks Pictures financed and produced independent follows Day, who also wrote El Tonto, as a mute simpleton who gets off a bus in Los Angeles and by happenstance suddenly rises through the Hollywood scene to become a celebrity, only to then lose it all. Beckinsale will play a Hollywood starlet while Sudeikis will portray a film director who Day’s mute encounters.

John Rickard and his Wrigley Pictures (Rampage) banner is also producing the Hollywood satire with Alex Saks via her Page Fifty-Four Pictures. Rickard is coming off this past spring’s success, the Dwayne Johnson action pic Rampage which reaped $426.2M at the global box office. He previously worked with Day as a producer on New Line’s Horrible Bosses franchise. Saks recently produced The Florida Project, Thoroughbreds and The Book Club. Endeavor Content is handling _El Tonto_‘s global rights. Armory’s Christopher Lemole and Tim Zajaros and Metalwork’s Andrew Levitas are also producing. Metalworks was behind another recent Beckinsale title that played TIFF, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje’s drama Farming.

Beckinsale, who is repped by UTA and Hansen, Jacobson, Teller, Hoberman, Newman, Warren, Richman, Rush & Kaller, is starring in Amazon and ITV’s series The Widow and starred recently in The Only Living Boy in New York, Underworld: Blood Wars and Whit Stillman’s Love & Friendship, an adaptation of Jane Austen’s novella Lady Susan that premiered at Sundance.

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Sudeikis was seen recently in Nick Hamm’s Driven which played at Venice and TIFF and is starring in Olivia Wilde’s upcoming feature directorial Booksmart. He’s also reprising his feathered character Red in Sony’s The Angry Birds Movie 2. He is repped by UTA and Brillstein Entertainment Partners.

Jillian Bell AP Images

Four-time Emmy winner Falco recently starred in Nicole Holofcener’s Netflix dramedy film The Land of Steady Habits and as Leslie Abramson in NBC’s Law & Order: True Crime. She is repped by ICM Partners and Management 360.

Upcoming for Malkovich is Voltage Pictures’ Tate Taylor-directed movie Eve opposite Jessica Chastain and the Ted Bundy thriller Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile. The two-time Oscar nominee is repped by WME.

Bell, a former SNL Emmy-nominated scribe and co-creator and star of Comedy Central’s Idiotsitter, is represented by UTA, 3 Arts, and Stone, Genow, Smelkinson, Binder & Christopher.

Day is on a roll. In addition to being a co-creator and star on FXX’s It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia which is in its 13th season, he’s also a co-creator and EP on Fox’s new comedy Cool Kids. In addition, ,Day is co-creating a half-hour scripted comedy with his Sunny in Philadelphia bud Rob McElhenney for Apple.