If anyone out there wants to see Will Smith’s house knocked down, his body covered in boils, and his sanity loosening from his grip as he scrapes at his raw skin with broken bits of pottery, the opportunity might be on the horizon.
The Oscar-nominated screenwriter team of Paul Tamasy and Eric Johnson (The Fighter) wrote the script for Joe ‐ a modern retelling of the Job story that you may have learned about in Sunday school while wondering why the teacher was telling you all those horrible, terrible, disgusting things. Tamasy went on Eric Snider and Jeff Bayer’s Movie B.S. Podcast and spoke a bit about the movie. In his own words, “It’s about a man [living] the American dream. He’s got the nice house, white picket fence, great kids, great wife, nice cars. God and the Devil get together every thousand years to bet on a man’s life, and the fate of the world is at stake. What all of us get hit with in a lifetime, this man gets hit with in a week, and it’s about whether or not he can still pick himself up from that and survive it. It’s a dramedy. At its heart, it’s a comedy, but it’s got, obviously, a real dramatic core to it.”
Sony will be developing this, but Will Smith is attached to a lot of flicks right now, and no single attachment really means anything anymore. This would be an insane return to acting for the Fourth of July Kid, and I’m curious to see what sort of comedic elements can come from the story. If they water down what happens to Joe, it could be Evan Almighty levels of pointless, but if they have comedy, it might be pitch black. Which would be awesome. Bring on the boils.