In 2014, Will Ferrell signed on to play director Russ Meyer in Russ and Roger Go Beyond, a comedy-drama about the making of Meyer’s controversial 1970 film Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. Josh Gad was attached to portray film critic Roger Ebert, creating a deliberately irreverent pairing around one of Hollywood’s most unusual director-critic relationships. The project was conceived as a comic look at Meyer’s sexploitation filmmaking and Ebert’s involvement in the screenplay, but it never reached production. By 2018, before filming began, the project was canceled in the atmosphere of the #MeToo movement. Meyer’s association with sexploitation cinema and the broader scrutiny of sexualized entertainment made the subject increasingly difficult to package as a light comedy for a major film audience. Ferrell therefore lost a planned starring role not because of a conventional casting dispute or financial collapse, but because the historical figure and the industry he represented had become newly contentious.
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AI concept artworkArchive Record · 2010s
The 2018 #MeToo Fallout That Killed Will Ferrell’s Russ Meyer Biopic
Russ and Roger Go Beyond / 2010s
In 2014, Will Ferrell signed on to play director Russ Meyer in Russ and Roger Go Beyond, a comedy-drama about the making of Meyer’s controversial 1970 film Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. Josh Gad was attached to portray film critic Roger Ebert, creating a deliberately irreverent pairing around one of Hollywood’s most unusual director-critic relationships. The project was conceived as a comic look at Meyer’s sexploitation filmmaking and Ebert’s involvement in the screenplay, but it never reached production. By 2018, before filming began, the project was canceled in the atmosphere of the #MeToo movement. Meyer’s association with sexploitation cinema and the broader scrutiny of sexualized entertainment made the subject increasingly difficult to package as a light comedy for a major film audience. Ferrell therefore lost a planned starring role not because of a conventional casting dispute or financial collapse, but because the historical figure and the industry he represented had become newly contentious.
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