As it turns out, that Will Ferrell-Mark Wahlberg football comedy wasn’t originally intended to be a The Other Guys reunion at all—it was supposed to be a The Departed reunion, putting Wahlberg back in a room with his (arguably funnier) sparring partner, Alec Baldwin. Producer Adam McKay relates how Ferrell muscled his way into the project in this Entertainment Weekly interview, where he also says that Baldwin will be playing Wahlberg’s father, a Kennedys-obsessed dive bar owner who pushes his family into an annual Thanksgiving football game with Ferrell’s clan across town, which they always lose.
When Baldwin suffers a heart attack in his august years, his dying wish is that Wahlberg reunite his grown siblings—most of whom are now addicts and ex-cons—and finally take Ferrell’s well-to-do family down. (Baldwin gets his George Gipp moment, in other words—an appropriate scene for a guy so closely associated with Reagan worship on 30 Rock. Still, not quite the elegant resolution to a sports rivalry that is punching John Krasinski in the face.)
Assuming Baldwin doesn’t find reason to back out of this one, he’ll be part of a sprawling ensemble that also includes Rob Riggle (playing Wahlberg’s gay cousin) and, in accordance with modern federal movie regulations, Jeremy Renner. And finally, as the previously reported title Turkey Bowl has already been claimed by a recently completed indie, McKay says they’re now tentatively switching it to Three Mississippi, which will take some extra effort to co-opt into a sneering headline should it suck.