We are hearing through The Hollywood Reporter that The Hangover director Todd Phillips and Steven Conrad (The Pursuit of Happyness) are teaming up to produce and write respectively a new biopic based on the life of comedian John Belushi.
Belushi appeared on Saturday Night Live in the US, as well as loads of popular movies, including Animal House and The Blues Brothers. Belushi died of a drug overdose in 1982 at the age of just 33.
The film will based on the book Belushi, published by his widow Judith Belushi Pisano in 2005.
Belushi is set up at Warner Brothers.
The book is described as follows:
On the day he turned thirty, John starred in America’s number-one movie (Animal House), starred in the number-one late-night show (Saturday Night Live) and had recorded the number-one album (Briefcase Full of Blues). All from a guy who was never supposed to make it out from behind the cash register of his family’s Chicago diner.
How did this Albanian immigrant’s son capture a nation’s imagination and come to embody all the glory and tragedy of the American dream? It was one high-price, high-speed, short-lived wild ride.
BELUSHI is a whirlwind of a book, filled with never-before-seen photos and provocative, intensely personal testimonials by just about every major comedic figure of the last half century. Here is the remarkable and raucous story of a larger-than-life figure who danced out at the precipice of American fame.
