What is The Manny, you say? That's a fair question, since the project is in the early stages and doesn't have any "names" attached yet. Suffice it to say it's one of many, many R-rated comedy scripts in the works out in the sweltering plot factories of Hollywood, and assuming all goes well it will probably show up in your theater in a few years starring whoever the equivalent of Jonah Hill is at that time. Now it's inched one teeny-tiny step closer to that goal, with Deadline reporting that new screenwriter Justin Malen has been hired to do rewrites on the script.
That Jonah Hill reference wasn't coincidental; The Manny sounds like it's right in the same vein as Hill's The Sitter, which opens tomorrow (and which is pictured above, because you try and find artwork to accompany a story about something called The Manny). Both take a traditional family-film concept -- the babysitter/nanny tasked with watching precocious kids -- and flip it on its head by having the authority figure be an irresponsible man-child. In the case of The Manny -- and let us pray they come up with a new title before it comes time to mock up the movie poster -- it's the story of a recent college grad who can't find a job in the financial world, so concocts a scheme to become the nanny (except he's a man, get it?) to a successful Wall Street bigshot in hopes that his amazing nanny skills will so impress the guy that he hires him for a "real job." That would, of course, require the protagonist to have some nanny skills in the first place, a deficiency I'm sure will figure into the plot at some point.
Malen sold his first script, a comedy called Bastards, to Paramount last summer and he's since landed several other writing assignments, so you might be hearing his name a lot in the future.
