After releasing the chaotic wedding flick You’re Cordially Invited, writer-director Nicholas Stoller, his star Will Ferrell, and Amazon MGM are wasting no time getting their next collaboration together. As announced back in October, the trio is back in business with Judgment Day, another original comedy featuring the Anchorman legend as a megalomaniacal reality television judge who’s about to get a visit from an angry convict he locked away. Now that their last effort together is officially in the rearview mirror, the project is about to heat up and Stoller is ready to share what’s about to go down in his fictional courtroom. He dove deep into the new movie in a recent conversation with Collider’s Steve Weintraub for his Prime Video rom-com, detailing what to expect from Judgment Day, the inspiration for it all, and when filming begins.
Stoller is in the middle of a busy stretch to begin 2025. “You’re Cordially Invited is this weekend, and then my wife and I are in post on Platonic, which will come out later this year, the second season,” he said. Anticipation is high for the return of Apple TV+’s Rose Byrne and Seth Rogen comedy series, and he assures, “It’s turned out great. So, that is coming out this year. We don’t have a release date yet for that.” Beyond that, he’s also preparing for the release of Andy Serkis‘s animated Animal Farm adaptation, which he penned the screenplay for.
Despite it all, his attention is heavily focused on getting Judgment Day off the ground. Since our interview with Stoller, it has been confirmed that Zac Efron will play the “other guy” in Judgment Day. Of the film’s plot, Stoller said:
“Then Judgment Day is about a TV judge, played by Will Ferrell. I don’t know if we’re allowed to talk about who the other guy is, but we’re pretty close to knowing who the other guys are. Basically, he’s a TV judge—kind of a blowhard, kind of a jerk. You find all this out over the course of the movie, but the backstory is he ruled against this guy years ago, and it caused this guy’s life to spiral, and he ended up in jail. He gets out of jail, and he takes the judge’s show hostage live on air in order to put the judge on the stand, is basically what it’s about. It’s a crazy movie.”
Nicholas Stoller Describes ‘Judgment Day’ as “Tense but Very Funny”
Though this is a comedy with Ferrell as its star playing a larger-than-life character, it won’t be entirely humorous. The setting of a hostage situation, even if it’s a bit bizarre, will create extra tension in the air that isn’t quite as present in his and Stoller’s previous team-ups like Blades of Glory, Zoolander 2, or You’re Cordially Invited. As far as inspiration goes, the writer-director looked to far more serious crime thrillers to capture the gravity of the life-or-death situation facing the judge while also referencing the Rob Reiner classic A Few Good Men to nail down the courtroom atmosphere. He explained:
“At this point, I’ve made enough things to be like, ‘I don’t know, it’s my tone.’ I can’t do the Adam McKay tone, which is so amazing. I love those movies. They’re incredible. They’re some of the greatest comedies ever, but I don’t know exactly how to do that. Inside Man and Dog Day Afternoon are the two references, and A Few Good Men. Those are the three movies I keep looking at, teasing apart and trying to figure out how they work. I think it would probably, tonally, if I do it correctly, be closest to Neighbors in that it will be actually tense but very funny. That’s the goal.”
Despite the change in stakes, Stoller believes Judgment Day has quite a bit in common with You’re Cordially Invited. For one, he sees it as another opportunity for Ferrell to deliver a more layered comedic performance. In the wedding comedy, he played a dad trying to secure a destination wedding venue for his daughter only to begin a war with the sister (Reese Witherspoon) of a bride-to-be over how to share the location, showcasing his more emotional side along the way. On a wider scale, Stoller also sees both leaning more heavily into their comedic sides than their genres:
“I’m kind of just like, ‘I hope I can pull it off.’ But it’s a bit like with You’re Cordially Invited; I think Will Ferrell is this amazing actor, in addition to being a great comedian. Doing comedy is acting, but doing an earnest, emotional scene, he hasn’t… And in this movie, he has a bunch of pretty earnest, emotional scenes that really pull my heartstrings. He has all these other gears that he’s done stuff in, but it’s been fun to do that in this one, too. I want it to be a tense kind of action movie, but it’ll be like all my movies. With You’re Cordially Invited, people are like, ‘It’s a rom-com,’ and I’m like, ‘Well, it’s more of a com-rom.’ It’s more comedic than rom-com-y.”
When Will ‘Judgment Day’ Start Filming?
Stoller further assures that he’s not being a stickler about what the genres You’re Cordially Invited and Judgment Day are or that he necessarily has a distaste for those types of films. “Not that there’s [anything] wrong with a rom-com,” he continued. “That’s just not what it is.” In the case of the latter, he set expectations for the level of humor by adding that he “wouldn’t say it’s an action comedy. I think at the end of the day it’ll be a comedy action movie.” Filming isn’t far off for the raucous project, as Stoller confirmed cameras will begin rolling in “Late April if all continues according to plan.”
Stay tuned here at Collider for more on Judgment Day as more news comes out. In the meantime, You’re Cordially Invited is now streaming on Prime Video.
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