Will Ferrell's Spoofy IFC Miniseries Gets Silly First Teaser

With four features behind them – five, if you could the upcoming Anchorman: The Legend Continues - and the hugely popular Funny or Die website as their giant sandbox, Will Ferrell and Adam McKay are one of the comedic forces in Hollywood. So it makes sense that these guys would be responsible for bringing “the most epic achievement in the history of television” to the world at large with their next project The Spoils of Babylon, which got its first sneak peak from IFC, seen above.

Granted, the teaser doesn’t actually give us any new information about the project, but it solidifies the over-the-top attitude of mock self-importance that the project really needs to hang its hat on to be successful. I mean, when you’ve got greed, lust, love and war as your story’s backdrop, the story opportunities are endless, but just hope the tone remains steady throughout, and they don’t rely solely on TV gimmicks like filming on 93mm “Break-Take-O-Scope.” I’m pretty sure that’s how Lonesome Dove and The Thorn Birds were filmed, and those miniseries aren’t even in production anymore! (Kidding, obviously.)

Based on the (fake) bestselling novel of the same name, The Spoils of Babylon will span three generations and timelines, leading viewers into oil fields, battlefields, boardrooms and bedrooms, through a tale involving espionage, booze, pills, infidelity and the Shah of Iran. It stars Ferrell, Tim Robbins, Kristen Wiig, Michael Sheen, Tobey Maguire, Haley Joel Osment, Jessica Alba, Val Kilmer and Steve Tom. So it really doesn’t have much of an excuse to be anything but amazing. But it still could be. I hope it’s at least as good as Adult Swim’s The Heart, She Holler from a couple of years ago, just with a better budget.

The miniseries will come to IFC in six-half hour episodes at some point in late 2013.