Josh Gad will play the late film critic Roger Ebert opposite Will Ferrell as maverick director Russ Meyer in the true story of the two men’s far-out 1970 joint venture, the cult classic Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.
The Hollywood Reporter says Gad, best known as the voice of Olaf the snowman in Disney animated mega-hit Frozen, has officially signed on to the long-gestating comedy, which is being directed by Britain’s Michael Winterbottom and is titled Russ & Roger. Ferrell agreed to play Meyer – the sexploitation specialist known for 1960s and 70s films such as Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, Vixen! and Supervixens – in August last year.
Beyond the Valley of the Dolls was Meyer’s first major studio film, put together after 20th Century Fox noted the large profits from his previous low-budget ventures. Ebert, then a nascent film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times, was hired to write the screenplay after giving the director one of his few positive reviews. The movie was originally intended to be a sequel to 1967’s non-Meyer effort Valley of the Dolls, but was ultimately retooled as a brash, hyper-real musical satire on the original. Ebert described it as “like a movie that got made by accident when the lunatics took over the asylum”. The plot details the rags-to-riches tale of an all-female band who chase dreams of superstardom through the sex-obsessed Hollywood rock scene.
Russ & Roger, which is based on a screenplay by Saturday Night Live’s Chris Cluess, will examine the debauched and hedonistic behind-the-scenes journey towards the release of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, which went on to be a surprise box-office hit despite censors handing it a prohibitive “X” certificate. It’s being billed as the tale of two outsiders who took on Hollywood convention and won, during a period when anti-establishment movies such as Easy Rider were shaking up the US film industry.
Ebert, who made several more movies with Meyer, including 1976’s Up! and 1979’s Beneath the Valley of the Ultravixens, went on to become one of the world’s most prominent movie critics. He died in April last year at the age of 70 after an 11-year battle with cancer. Meyer died in 2004 at the age of 82 after having suffered from pneumonia.
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