The project is apparently being set up at Paramount Pictures under the producorial stewardship of Scott Rudin, a man whose myriad credits include The Social Network, Clueless, No Country for Old Men, Team America: World Police, and every Wes Anderson joint from The Royal Tenenbaums on.
According to Vulture, Galifianakis is already attached to star, while Bobin is currently in negotiations to direct. The screenplay, meanwhile, will be in the hands of Phil Johnston. Johnston wrote last year's Cedar Rapids and contributed to Nebraska, the next film from Alexander Payne that's currently casting. Galifiankis, of course, is the transcendently strange stand-up comedian who became an improbable movie star with his role in The Hangover. Bobin, the Flight of the Conchords co-creator and Da Ali G Show director, made his feature debut with The Muppets.
They're the latest in a long line of creative, funny folks who have endeavored to get A Confederacy of Dunces made. Erstwhile Egon Spengler actor and Caddyshack director set up the project in 1982, but his plans were derailed when his Ignatius, John Belushi, died tragically. In the decades since, other potential leads have included the similarly ill-fated John Candy and Chris Farley. More recently, Will Ferrell signed on to star, but the project still failed to gain traction, perhaps at least partially because of its history.
The novel was published more than a decade after its author, John Kennedy Toole, committed suicide in 1969, and it then went on to win the Pulitzer for fiction in 1981. Set in New Orleans, the story follows Ignatius J. Reilly, an overweight and proudly malodorous medievalist who lives with his mother, Irene. When the blustering and borderline-delusional Ignatius is forced to seek employment, he finds he is lacking "some particular perversion which today's employer is seeking." He fails as a hot dog vendor and incites a revolution at a pants company. His actions spill over, in some way or another, into the lives of many supporting characters whose peculiar circumstances would be difficult to do justice onscreen.
So the question is, "Will these guys finally make A Confederacy of Dunces movie?" Hard to say. If history is any indication, the answer is a resounding "No," but we live in a world where there's a hugely-budgeted Battleship in theaters, so stranger things have certainly happened. Bobin is currently writing a sequel to The Muppets with Nicholas Stoller, and if he ends up directing that, then this adaptation could be some ways off, at best. Galifianakis is set to reprise his role as a one-man wolfpack in The Hangover Part III, with production set to begin this September for a May 2013 release.











































