Doug over at The Movie Blog posted about The Grand yesterday and his post was a little over the top with the amazement that he hadn’t see the trailer for it before and was loving what he saw.
And now that I’ve seen it, I totally have to agree.
The Grand is a comedy with a sick cast of players who go to a real life poker tournament and pretty much improvise everything.
Here is the list of the talent in this film:
David Cross, Shannon Elizabeth, Dennis Farina, Judy Greer, Woody Harrelson, Cheryl Hines, Gabe Kaplan, Richard Kind, Chris Parnell, Ray Romano, Hank Azaria, Doyle Brunson, Phil Helmuth, Phil Laak, Phil Gordon and other various poker players and dealers.
Phil Gordon!
The film is directed, produced and written by Zak Penn, who also was a writer on X-Men 2, Behind Enemy Lines and Last Action Hero.
Penn has had this script in mind for awhile and since he had a few hits under his belt with X-Men 2, he got the funding for this project.
The movie had a basic outline, but most of the rest was improvised by the actors during real poker games on their way to a fake tournament.
Penn said this back in 2006:
“A lot of actors were intrigued by this, because they are naturally competitive. And the fact that poker has become this crazy phenomenon isn’t unhelpful to us.”
The only thing I might add is that this “phenomenon” has kind of subsided I think since 2006, so will there be people up for seeing this?
From the previews, it looks almost like an improvised documentary along the lines of Best in Show, or Spinal Tap.
The poster for the movie is below. Sadly, couldn’t find a bigger version.
The film is set to hit theaters around March 21st, 2008.
that is an impressive cast. safe to say we will be checking the movie out when it hits the theaters.
Yeah, cast looks good, trailer was pretty funny.
lol – pretty funny.
[...] few weeks or months ago, (who can remember back past a few days anyways?) we posted an article about the new comedy called The Grand, an half-improv-ed film in which a boatload of hilarious [...]