Terry Zwigoff was on a monster role early in the new millennium with Ghost World and then the instantly classic dark Christmas comedy Bad Santa. Unfortunately his next movie was something of a speed bump. He used the three years after Bad Santa to make a stinker called Art School Confidential. He can do better.

Zwigoff will try to do better for New Line Cinema. They’ve just hired him to direct a comedy spoof called The $40,000 Man. The bad news is he’s re-teaming with Daniel Clowes, the guy who helped him write Art School Confidential. They also wrote Ghost World together so they’re hitting one out of two.

The $40,000 Man is basically the Bionic Man if he were built for $40,000. That’s right, Terry Zwigoff has resorted to recycling Family Guy gags. The focus of the story is a legendary American hero and astronaut injured in a car accident and then built on a budget. On its own, the concept sounds kind of awful, like the sort of direct-to-DVD movie you’d expect Harland Williams to star in. But it’s Zwigoff, there has to be more to it than this. Even at his worst the guy is usually more creative than this.