The Informant is director Steven Soderbergh’s return to plot-driven comedy after a few years of smaller films like Che and The Girlfriend Experience.  I generally enjoy Soderbergh movies (Out of Sight is an underappreciated classic and I even liked Solaris), and I’d probably see this one based on the Matt Damon wallpaper alone (see above).

‘The Informant’ is about Ivy League Ph.D. Mark Whitacre (Damon), a rising star at Decatur, Illinois-based Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) in the early 1990s who wound up blowing the whistle on the company’s price-fixing tactics. [WAMG]

Apparently the case had to do with Lysine price fixing and a class-action suit about high-fructose corn syrup.  This is neither here nor there, but I think if you were were trying to tough-talk some bigwigs in the corn industry, saying “Oh yeah?  Well I pick pieces of guys like you out of my stool,” would be a really apt insult. Haha, good one, Jay.

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Director Steven Soderbergh (Out of Sight, Traffic, Ocean’s 11) is clearly up to something.  The cast of his upcoming thriller The Informant includes:

The Soup host Joel McHale, Scott Bakula of Quantum Leap, Mike O’Malley from Yes, Dear (apparently it’s a show), comedians Andrew Daly, Tom Papa, and Rick Overton, and a couple others you’ve probably never heard of.  Oh yeah, and Matt Damon.

Bakula and McHale will play FBI agents working with agri-business insider Mark Whitacre (Damon) to stop a price-fixing scam. The film is based on Kurt Eichenwald’s 2000 best-seller "The Informant: A True Story."

So what’s up with the weird casting?

Although the subject matter is serious, one behind-the-scenes informant said Soderbergh is looking to create a thriller with dark comedy elements. He chose comedic actors who haven’t been overexposed on film, planning to have them play their roles seriously and have a humorous tone emerge naturally. [Hollywood Reporter]

An intentionally unintentionally funny movie; very interesting.  However, I can’t imagine it’ll work without the master of unintentional comedy, Nic Cage.  Unless Wicker Man was intentionally funny, in which case Nic Cage is a genius; a frozen-faced savant.  I’ve already cast him as the lead in my Schindler’s List miniseries, alongside Mickey Rourke, Paul Walker, Nick Nolte, Mini Me, and Olympia Dukakis.