Russell Brand has seemingly rebounded from Katy Perry into a Michael Bay production. He’s played a rockstar version of himself, a privileged version of himself, and at the start of his film career himself if he ever ended up a teacher in a school full of lingerie-clad 25-year-old schoolgirls. But now he’s set to return to our screens as The Hauntrepreneur – a man with a title so incongruous that I’m not sure whether to laugh when I hear it or just go along with it in the spirit I’m sure it’s meant to be taken.
The film tells the story of an eccentric man who helps a family adjust to a new town through the medium of a haunted house filled with strange characters.
Bay’s been working on this project with an eye to producing for a while now with a script first presented by Scott Rosenberg (of Con Air and High Fidelity mild fame). Brand is the only casting announcement to date and if there’s anyone who can carry off ‘kooky’, ‘affable’ and ‘charming’, I’m sure it’ll be him. But I nevertheless get the feeling that he needs to at least attempt one of those break-the-mould roles and the sooner the better really, lest fickle Hollywood grow tired of his repeated reliance on his all-English persona. I’m not talking an Anne Hathaway Havoc-style career tangent here, more of a Jim Carrey Truman Show-style affair.
Even so his next role will indeed see him back in the world of cheesy rock with the big screen adaptation of Rock of Ages in which he plays Lonnie the manager of the film’s The Bourbon Room and of course narrator. Let’s just hope that he doesn’t find himself too typecast too soon or Russell Brand’s foray into Hollywood might be an all too fleeting one.
Source: Variety.
