John Oliver To Star In Absolutely Anything, Robin Williams And Monty Python Cast In Talks

Be it on The Daily Show or Community, John Oliver has proven that he is immensely funny. The problem, however, is that Oliver's character was only on five of Community's twenty-five episode first season and doesn't show up every night on the late night show with Jon Stewart (though he is always working behind the scenes as a writer). That may soon change. The actor has only one film role on his resume, a character named "Dick Pants" in the embarrassingly bad The Love Guru, but if the talent surrounding him in his new venture is any indication, Oliver may be ready to go the route of many Daily Show correspondents before him.

Deadline reports that Oliver is now set up to star in Absolutely Anything, a film written and directed by Monty Python's Terry Jones. Described as being about, "aliens, a goofy Brit, a talking dog and buckets of silliness," the project has reached out to Robin Williams to play the dog and Jones' former cohorts John Cleese, Michael Palin, Eric Idle and Terry Gilliam to voice the aliens, all of whom are in talks. The film is set to begin production next spring.

Should all of the names be secured, I'm not sure that this film could possibly fail. The only potential weak link in the bunch is Williams, but that's not for his lack of talent, rather his insistence on choosing scripts like Old Dogs. A Monty Python reunion paired with one of the best British comedians working today and a stand-up legend - that's the stuff dreams are made of.

Eric Eisenberg
Assistant Managing Editor

Eric Eisenberg is the Assistant Managing Editor at CinemaBlend. After graduating Boston University and earning a bachelor’s degree in journalism, he took a part-time job as a staff writer for CinemaBlend, and after six months was offered the opportunity to move to Los Angeles and take on a newly created West Coast Editor position. Over a decade later, he's continuing to advance his interests and expertise. In addition to conducting filmmaker interviews and contributing to the news and feature content of the site, Eric also oversees the Movie Reviews section, writes the the weekend box office report (published Sundays), and is the site's resident Stephen King expert. He has two King-related columns.