Josh Gad Will Play Film Critic Roger Ebert in RUSS & ROGER Biopic

Formerly titled Russ & Roger Go BeyondRuss & Roger has been in the works for a long time. Will Ferrell is already on board to play director Russ Meyer, and now THR confirms that Frozen and Book of Mormon star Josh Gad will play film critic Roger Ebert in Michael Winterbottom's true story behind the making of the 1970s cult classic Beyond The Valley of The Dolls.

Ebert was only a third-string film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times when he teamed with Meyer, a director of notorious exploitation films like Faster Pussycat! Kill, Kill! to make a movie for 20th Century Fox. The studio liked how Meyer handled his budgets, and following some high profile failures in the '60s (including Cleopatra, one of the biggest box office flops of all time), studio head Richard Zanuck gave him the opportunity to direct a movie for them. This film tells the story of the making of that movie, and it's described as "a debaucherous comedy centering on two outsiders who defied the Hollywood establishment and made one of the first X-rated films ever released by a major movie studio, having the party of a lifetime in the process." (Note: Meyer passed away in 2004, and Ebert died in 2013.)

Gad is a talented guy who resembles a younger Ebert, but I'm really interested in seeing what Ferrell does as Meyer. He could easily turn this into an over-the-top caricature, but I'm hoping there's a little more subtlety to it than that. Then again, I probably shouldn't be expecting subtlety if they're portraying the duo who made this (NSFW):

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