Zooey Deschanel Joins David Gordon Green’s Your Highness
David Gordon Green,James FrancoandDanny McBrideare following their stoner action moviePineapple Expresswith a stoner medieval comedy calledYour Highness, andZooey Deschanelhas just joined the cast. Shooting starts this month in Northern Ireland, according toTHR, withNatalie Portmanalso in the picture.
Ben Best wrote the script, which features “an arrogant, lazy prince (McBride) who must complete a quest to save his father’s kingdom.” His heroic brother (Franco), or his relatively more heroic brother anyway, joins him, and Deschanel will play his bride. Portman is a warrior princess who is love interest for McBride. Yeah, I love that idea, too.
This isn’t the first collaboration between Deschanel, McBride and Green. One of Zooey Deschanel’s first big roles (after a string of supporting work) was in David Gordon Green’s 2003All the Real Girls. That film was also Danny McBride’s first feature credit, but he and the director go much farther back than that. They were neighbors during their first year of film school, and McBride did second unit directing on Green’s excellent feature debutGeorge Washington. And Ben Best, who wroteYour Highness, is part of that family, too. He co-createdEastbound and Downand co-wroteThe Foot Fist Way, where he also played Chuck ‘The Truck’ Wallace. So this is a picture made by a big family…or a big family picture about a lazy stoner prince.
McBride has compared the movie to ’80s schlock like The Beastmaster and Krull (he actually said ‘Barry LyndonmeetsKrull’ at one point, which gives me a big grin) and it’s been said that it has dragons, wizards, all the good stuff. McBride’s character’s weapon of choice is the Hoop of Doom, basically a metal hula hoop. The idea is to make an R-rated picture that has some of the same vibe and effects as those ’80s fantasy mini-epics.
