Justin Theroux is taking his brand of humor (and Will Arnett) to space. He’s also going to be doing it with a romantic comedy twist, says THR.
The actor turned writer who penned the scripts for both Tropic Thunder and Iron Man 2 has signed on to write a draft of Space Invader for 20th Century Fox. The project, which originally had Fido director Andrew Currie and Arnett, follows the story of a space shuttle janitor who becomes jealous of his astronaut girlfriend and her trip to the international space station with an all-American über-douche. It is based on an original script by Mike Lisbe and Nate Reger, which was reviewed by ScriptShadow (via /Film), who revealed the following plot points below:
Doug, the space shuttle janitor, watches helplessly as his astronaut girlfriend heads off on a 3 month International Space Station mission with Stamp Majors, all-American astronaut superstar and philanthropist (think a cross between a real life version of Buzz Lightyear, and the character Owen Wilson plays in Meet The Parents). He begins to think that the two are getting it on and decides to…um…intervene. Really liked this one. It’s pretty broad but there are some great touches. We’ve all been in that position where our boyfriend/girlfriend is going to be in close quarters with some attractive dude/chick for a weekend trip or something and in the back of our minds are thinking, “Should I go there?” Of course we never do (well, ahem, most of the time we don’t) but in this case Doug takes it to the extreme, and decides to actually fly his way up to the International Space Station to make sure his girlfriend doesn’t bang Stamp.
There’s no word on how much Theroux will change the story from what Lisbe and Reger originally wrote, but based on the info in the THR report, it looks to be about the same. Best guess is that Theroux is coming in to punch-up the script a bit and give it some more laughs, or better action pacing. Who knows. In the end, this feels a project with potential, despite being fairly derivative. I mean, we’ve all been in that situation where we’re curious as to what’s going on with our lady friend and the men in her close proximity, have we not? Now we get to see Will Arnett go through the same situation – in space. I don’t see anything wrong with that.
Current reports say that Theroux is in line to direct the pic, but nothing is set in stone just yet.
