Movies
Zach Galifianakis Drops Out of Undead Buddy Comedy ‘R.I.P.D.’
On and off again too many times to count, Zach Galifianakis is withdrawing from starring with Ryan Reynolds in the Universal Pictures supernatural comedy R.I.P.D., which Robert Schwentke will direct, reports Deadline.
Galifianakis liked the project just fine–it’s about a force of undead police officers based on the Peter Lenkov comic–but scheduling just got too hairy.
Galifianakis hoped to fit the film in before or after he stars with Will Ferrell in the Jay Roach-directed Southern Rivals for Warner Bros. But there was no certainty whether those plans would fit in because Warner Bros has an option on Reynolds, who might be obliged to do a sequel to Green Lantern quickly. Galifianakis also had the complexity of his own obligation to the HBO series “Bored to Death.” So his participation in the undead project is dead, officially.
Universal has been having a hell of a time getting their Universal Monsters brand back on a better path in the wake of the Dark Universe collapsing, with four movies thus far released in the years since The Mummy attempted to get that interconnected universe off the ground.
First was Leigh Whannell’s The Invisible Man, to date the only post-Mummy hit for the Universal Monsters, followed by The Last Voyage of the Demeter, Renfield, and now Abigail. The latter three films have attempted to bring Dracula back to the screen in fresh ways, but both Demeter and Renfield severely underperformed at the box office. And while Abigail is a far better vampire movie than those two, it’s unfortunately also struggling to turn a profit.
Where does the Universal Monsters brand go from here? The good news is that Universal and Blumhouse have once again enlisted the help of Leigh Whannell for their upcoming Wolf Man reboot, which is howling its way into theaters in January 2025. This is good news, of course, because Whannell’s Invisible Man was the best – and certainly most profitable – of the post-Dark Universe movies that Universal has been able to conjure up. The film ended its worldwide run with $144 million back in 2020, a massive win considering the $7 million budget.
Given the film was such a success, you may wondering why The Invisible Man 2 hasn’t come along in these past four years. But the wait for that sequel may be coming to an end.
Speaking with the Happy Sad Confused podcast this week, The Invisible Man star Elisabeth Moss notes that she feels “very good” about the sequel’s development at this point in time.
“Blumhouse and my production company [Love & Squalor Pictures]… we are closer than we have ever been to cracking it,” Moss updates this week. “And I feel very good about it.”
She adds, “We are very much intent on continuing that story.”
At the end of the 2020 movie, Elisabeth Moss’s heroine Cecilia Kass uses her stalker’s high-tech invisibility suit to kill him, now in possession of the technology that ruined her life.
Stay tuned for more on The Invisible Man 2 as we learn it.
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