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Get ready for more hilarity from the minds of Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg.
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Following in the tradition of the 1970s Canadian comedy invasion of America, which brought with it Lorne Michaels, Dan Akroid and Ivan Reitman, fellow Canadians and childhood friends Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg are continuing their comedic collaborations. The duo that brought the world this year’s mega comedy hit Neighbors, to be followed this fall by the controversial The Interview, are making plans for several new movies together.
It would seem only natural that the two would make a sequel to Neighbors. With a budget of only $18 million, that film has grossed almost $150 million in the US alone as of the end of June. It had the fourth highest grossing opening weekend ever in America for an R rated comedy.
Rogen and Goldberg are currently working hard at getting their pet project, the comedy Jazz Cops, into production. The movie, if it gets made, will star Seth Rogen and Kevin Hart as two police officers in the 1950s, who try to go under cover among Jazz musicians. It will be directed by Nicholas Stoller, who directed Neighbors.
Rogen, Goldberg and their other partner, James Warner, explained the secret of their success to an audience at the Produced By conference in Los Angeles last month. The team believes that the secret is to provide a movie studio with such a low budget that it would leave them alone to make the movie any way they want, since the studio won’t be so worried about the money it invested in the project.
They feel that The Green Hornet failed because it has a $120 million budget and as a result the studio forced them to tone down the film. The three had wanted an R rated picture but were forced to settle for a PG 13. That movie barely made more than $100 million.
Rogen said that on Neighbors “we played the studio game, and continually received notes and waited for the call that the movie would go forward. We stopped, had a real moment, and cut the budget in half, which, it turns out, was the factor stopping the project in the first place.” Once the cost of production was trimmed, the trio were given more freedom by the studio.
Rogen and Goldberg have also collaborated on The Guilt Trip, This is the End and 50/50, which starred Rogen and Joseph Gordon Levitt.
Born in Vancouver, British Columbia, Seth Rogen has described his parents, who met on an Israeli kibbutz, as “radical Jewish socialists.” Evan Goldberg was also born to a Jewish family in Vancouver.
