Zach Galifianakis adds another film to his slate

By Sarah Sluis

Since The Hangover became a runaway success, its stars have been busily lining up projects. Zach Galifianakis, the misfit in the movie, has become the rising star of the group. He has queued up an impressive array of projects, including Dinner for Schmucks and Due Date, and is currently considering a role in It's Kind of a Funny Story.

Based on a teen novel, the story centers on a depressed 15-year-old who is sent to a mental institution for five days, where he turns around thanks to his interactions with the other patients. Galifianakis will play a patient, which sounds like a perfect role for his unhinged style of humor. Focus Features is producing the picture, and it's rumored to offer Galifianakis a meatier performance than straight comedy. So far, his only co-star is Emma Roberts, who will play a patient and love interest. Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden, who directed/wrote Half Nelson and Sugar, are re-teaming for the movie. There's a long history of great mental institution/hospital films in Hollywood--One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Girl, Interrupted among them--so It's Kind of a Funny Story will have good company. The announcement also comes as Zack Snyder's Sucker Punch, an action film taking place in a mental institution, has started filming in Vancouver.

Galifianakis is on the cusp, as he transitions from smaller roles to bigger ones, so you can catch a glimpse of him as a homeless man in Gigantic (recently released on video, and you can read my interview with the director), a man in a suit in G-Force, and a trailer-trash boyfriend in upcoming Youth in Revolt. He's also appearing in HBO Brooklyn-set crime show "Bored to Death." Whew.

In the meantime, he's wrapped Due Date, a road trip film he stars in with Robert Downey, Jr., who must endure the man in order to make it to the hospital in time for his wife's birth. He's set to play another pitiable/annoying appendage in Dinner for Schmucks, where he will play an assistant manager in a mattress store who is dating Steve Carell's ex-wfe. Then there's The Hangover 2, which will start shooting this year. Galifianakis' career is going straight up--let's hope he can hang on and enjoy the ride.