Chris Rock is working on a follow-up to Top Five, the comedian’s acclaimed feature-film comedy that achieved excellent reviews and consolidated his place as a mainstream writer-director.
In an interview with Complex, Rock said he meets with producer Scott Rudin “every week now going over this next movie”, and that Rudin wants him “to work at a faster pace”. He also suggested that “a lot of the same cast” would be involved, mentioning “you might want to see a little more of Leslie Jones or Tracy [Morgan]”. The latter, who plays Fred in Top Five, was seriously injured in a road accident in 2014.
Top Five, which was released in December in the US after impressing at the Toronto film festival last year, is a semi-autobiographical comedy about a stand-up comedian trying to develop a career as a serious actor. Rock wrote and directed it, as well as taking the lead role; so far it has grossed just over $25m.
Rudin is the Oscar-winning producer of No Country for Old Men, and is also attached to the long-gestating Martin Scorsese-backed remake of the Kurosawa kidnap-drama High and Low, for which Rock was apparently hired to work on a rewrite in 2010. However, since the death of High and Low’s planned director Mike Nichols, it is not known if the project will go ahead.
