BY: ORANGECHAIR
Writer/Director Judd Apatow has given the entertainment world a number of different films filled with his quirky humor. The writer and director of The 40 Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up and Funny People as well as the television show Freaks and Geeks, which gave Seth Rogan his start, is bringing us another film in 2012. The film is called This is 40 and stars Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann, Apatow’s wife, as characters we have seen before.
The 2007 film Knocked Up focused on its main characters, played by Seth Rogan and Katherine Heigl, and how they deal with the baby resulting from a one night stand. Apatow has a skill for crafting side characters that are not only hilarious but serve a purpose in the film and Knocked Up boasts a number of them. Two characters in particular from the film seemed to stand out from the rest. Pete and Debbie, played by Mann and Rudd, play an old, tired, fighting, married couple that mirrors the life that waits for Rogan and Heigl. Rudd and Mann played the characters well enough for them to quickly become audience favorites. Apatow not only recognized the audience’s love of the characters but decided to build upon it.
The film This is 40 takes place a few years after Knocked Up and so far, Rogan and Heigl are not listed as characters in the new film. This Is 40 is not a sequel to Knocked Up, it is a continuation of Pete and Debbie’s lives. The plot of the film surrounds a one week time period in which both Pete and Debbie turn 40. Not all that much information about the content of the film has been released other than a handful of actors and actresses that have signed onto the project. Not only do Leslie Mann and Paul Rudd return but Apatow’s own children, Iris and Maude Apatow, return as the Pete and Debbie’s children. Also signed onto the project, as of right now, are Jason Segel, Melissa McCarthy, Albert Brooks, John Lithgow and regrettably Meghan Fox. The film is slated to be released in late 2012. Judd Apatow and Knocked Up fans, we may have to wait for it but another promising film will arrive before the year’s end.