Jacob Tremblay has signed on to star in the R-rated comedy Good Boys for Universal. The studio acquired the script from The Office alums Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky, who will also be making their directorial debut with the film.
The comedy is said to be in the vein of Superbad and Sausage Party, and follows four 12 year old boys who skip school to go on a day-long adventure fraught with comedic peril, so expect plenty of raunchiness, a departure from the roles Tremblay has usually taken on in his brief career thus far.
He’s best known for his roles in Room and Wonder, being nominated for a SAG award for the former. He’ll next be seen in Shane Black‘s The Predator.
Eisenberg and Stupnitsky won the 2007 WGA Comedy Series Award for The Office, and they also wrote the Cameron Diaz comedy vehicle Bad Teacher, which opened to middling reviews but reeled in a healthy $216 million worldwide.
The Superbad and Sausage Party comparisons are not simply plucked out of the blue, as Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, writers of both films, will produce Good Boys under their Point Grey banner.
It’s also worth wondering if projects in a totally different genre – last year’s horror film IT and the smash hit series Stranger Things – played a part in getting this made, as prior to those, there was a feeling among Hollywood that adults wouldn’t pay to see films starring children. The creators of Stranger Things said that was the reason multiple networks passed on the show.
With the success of those projects, there’s proof that consumers don’t worry about these minute details as much as people in the industry do. Now we can look forward to Tremblay stepping out of his comfort zone in Good Boys, which is set to begin production in July.
#Peace.Love.GoodBoys
