Isla Fisher

Ladies! Did you enjoy the raunchy, no-holds-barred, what-will-they-do-next comedy stylings of The Hangover? But, as you were watching Mike Tyson punch out that dude with the beard, were you secretly thinking, ‘Gosh, this is really funny, but what I’d really like to see is a female-oriented version of this envelope-pushing fun, potentially starring Isla Fisher’? If so, then your dreams have come true!

For, showing that virtually any comedy idea can get the green light these days if the pitch contains the words, “It’s kinda like The Hangover”, Universal has indeed picked up a spec script called Desperados, with the delightful Fisher circling to star.

If she signs on the line that is dotted, the impossibly cute former Home & Away star will play a girl who sends an angry email to her ex when he drops off the radar after having sex. When she then discovers that he’s in a coma in a Mexican hospital, for some reason that’s not clear at this point, she races to Mexico with some of her friends… not to be at his bedside, but to intercept and delete the email before he wakes up.

Riiiiiiiiiight. We know what you’re thinking, because we’re thinking it too: ‘wow, that’s one unsympathetic lead character’. Which might be why producers Mark Gordon and Jason Blum have plumped for Fisher, who’s so pixie-like and gorram likeable that she could play Nick Griffin and make him seem like a Disney character.

The project has also been pitched as – yes! – a female-oriented Hangover, with Fisher in the Bradley Cooper role, and her three friends presumably filling the same archetypes – insular nerd, outrageous eccentric – as Ed Helms and Zach Galifianakis in Todd Phillips’ hit. And, if it turns out to be as funny as The Hangover, then all will be forgiven.

No director is yet attached, but it should be only a matter of time.
 

Isla Fisher, last seen wearing a ridiculous array of fabulous fashion in Confessions of a Shopaholic, is in line for two new films at Universal: Life Coach and Someday My Princes Will Come. And it sounds like both are right up her light-comedy alley.

Life Coach is a comedy that will see Fisher play a young woman who decides to consult a, well, life coach (for those of you who don't watch Oprah, this is a quasi-therapist who advises you on how to improve all spheres of your life that need work). The only problem is that this particular coach is even more messed up than she is. Hilarity, we're guessing, ensues. Former Saturday Night Live writer Liz Cackowski and Maggie Carey will write that one.

Someday My Princes Will Come is based on an as-yet unproduced French script called Un jour mes princes viendront. Yes, they're now remaking French movies that haven't technically been made. There's no word on the plot of this one yet, except that it's a rom-com, but we're going to wildly speculate, based on title and genre, that a girl waits ages for the perfect man and then two / three come along at once. Because men are basically like buses: large, red and a bit smelly.

Audrey Wells, who wrote and directed Under The Tuscan Sun, will be writing that one. In the meantime, Fisher fans can at least hear her dulcet tones in Gore Verbinski's upcoming Rango, the story of a household pet who goes on an adventure to find himself.