Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane has signed a deal with Universal to make his feature film directorial debut on Ted, a $65 million “hard-R” picture about “a man and his teddy bear.”

MacFarlane will also co-star and provide the voice for the CG-generated title character. MacFarlane wrote the script with Family Guy cohorts Alec Sulkin and Wellesley Wild, and he will produce with MRC, Scott Stuber and John Jacobs.  I’ve heard that the intention of Universal, MRC and MacFarlane is to get the film into production this year.  MacFarlane will work the film around his exhausting duties supervising the animated Fox shows Family Guy, The Cleveland Show and American Dad!, and providing a majority of the voices. Fox and MacFarlane have long wanted to make a Family Guy theatrical feature, but Ted will come first. Fox apparently was reluctant to embrace the teddy bear movie because of its  R-rating. [Deadline]

I’m picturing an adult version of Gooby that sneaks you whiskey and you jerk each other off.  Because if not that, what are imaginary friends for?

I don’t know why, but I like Seth MacFarlane.  I mostly liked the old Family Guy, meaning I like about 35% of the total Family Guy episodes. It’s okay, but you want to hate it when you see guys like the guy on MacFarlane’s right in the video laughing as hard as they do at it. Shut up, dork, you’re ruining this for me. But American Dad! is meh and The Cleveland Show is essentially unwatchable.  But for some reason, I still see Seth MacFarlane and imagine a guy I wouldn’t mind hanging out with.  I’m just glad this hasn’t happened with Jerry Bruckheimer.  Praying for his fiery death is all that gives my life meaning.

Read the rest of this entry »

Seth McFarlane was on The Adam Carolla Podcast (which I highly, highly recommend) the other day, and the discussion eventually turned to The Family Guy movie, which is apparently in the works, and… may included live action?  Here’s the exchange:

MCFARLANE: I can say with definitive assuredness that it will be out.  Within the next few years.  We already know what it’s gonna be.  We’ve been trying to lock into something that makes it so that it has to be a movie, as opposed to an extended Family Guy episode.  And I like the Simpson’s Movie, but that’s something they could do with animation on TV because they’re not constrained by sets. [...] You have to find some way to make it so that it has to be a movie.

CAROLLA: Are you hinting at some live action?

MCFARLANE: Possibly, possibly. Here and there.  It will not be a 90-minute Family Guy episode.

That sounds like a lot of work. And judging by how many Family Guy episodes are on at any given time, Seth McFarlane must have roughly 18 bajillion dollars.  If I were him, I wouldn’t be making movies.  I’d be sitting by the pool while my buxom assistant fed me nachos. Because I don’t like to get the cheese on my fingers, you see.

I’m still on the fence when it comes to loving Family Guy or hating it (it’s hard to judge something where half the jokes make you laugh and the other half make you want to punch yourself). Regardless, I’ve always gotten the feeling that Seth MacFarlane would rather be making broadway musicals (take that for what you will).  Recently, he went on Fox’s Talk Show with Spike Ferestein [Editor's note: What? Who?] to sing this mildly amusing musical number. “Valentine’s in Hollywood” references topical matters like Lindsay Lohan’s lesbionity, Tom Cruise’s gayness, and Angelina Jolie’s labia.  No matter how you feel about Seth MacFarlane, you have to admit he has a ridiculous voice.  Hard to imagine it coming out of a guy in his early 20s like he was when he started.  It’s actually terrifying.  Imagine getting served coffee by a guy who looks like Shia LaBeouf but has Harry Shearer’s voice.  I’d probably just get scared and hit it with a shovel (always my first instinct).

[via BWE]

A Hollywood insider and avid (belligerent?) FilmDrunkard has informed me that the studio who made the Anaconda sequels is developing a buddy heist movie called Safe Bet, with Gary Busey and Adam West attached.  Now, this sounds very much like an unverified AICN rumor, but… uh, so’s your face.

I’m sure the movie will go straight to DVD if it ever even makes it to production, but I don’t think it’s too much to hope for a trailer at least as good as this one.  It’s an interesting pairing, because real-life Busey is at least as colorful as Adam West’s Family Guy alter ego (funnier, too).

Busey facts of the day: Gary Busey was breast fed until the age of 25 by a mysterious Chinese woman he later killed and ate.  Gary Busey had to remove the batteries in his smoke alarm because it would go off every time he orgasmed.  Later he burned his house down, just to prove a point.   

This is Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane’s contribution to the ongoing writer’s strike negotiations.  

My first concern about it, when I discovered that the premise was that the movie producers were represented by a group of puppets, was how this one joke was going last all three minutes and 27 seconds.

But hey, who better to milk a joke than the Family Guy guy?  And you know what, he almost won me over with the Jew arguing with a monkey-squirrel. Though I think if I were to let a species hybrid represent me at a board meeting, I’d go with a rhino-badger or a shark-falcon.  No one can hold his own against a Jew like a shark-falcon.

^{(Thanks to "RoboPanda" for the tip, and apologies on the shortage of posts today. We’ll be back on track tomorrow.  You’ll be able to tell by the back-on-track marks.)}