Adaptation claws its way out of development hell.
Vulture has learned that ‘The Hangover’ star Zach Galifianakis and ‘Flight of the Conchords’ co-creator and ‘The Muppets’ director James Bobin are to team up for ‘A Confederacy of Dunces,’ the long gestating adaptation of John Kennedy Toole’s posthumously Pulitzer Prize–winning novel of the same name.
The script was penned by Phil Johnston (‘Nebraska,’ ‘Cedar Rapids’), and centres on Ignatius J. Reilly (Galifianakis), a self proclaimed genius in his mid-thirties that lives at home. The film will follow Reilly as he sets out to find a job in the New Orleans French Quarter.
Previous attempts to bring Toole’s cult classic to the big screen have failed at the last hurdle, including a Harold Ramis-directed version starring John Belushi, and most recently a Steven Soderbergh penned adaptation with Will Ferrell in the role of Ignatius J Reilly under the direction of David Gordon Green. That project fell into development hell in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
The project is long believed to be cursed, with three previous hopefuls for the part of Ignatius — Belushi, Chris Farley and John Candy – having suffered untimely deaths.