Back in April, it was announced that Ben Stiller would be the latest actor to say he was starring in The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty, the remake of the 1947 Danny Kaye film that has been attached over the years to seemingly every comic actor who has made over $100 million at the box office, unless they were Adam Sandler or black. At the time the project was still in search of a director who could handle the script’s blend of broad comedy and fantasy and “mix action with a PG rating,” and now it seems as though Stiller has found just the man to tell Ben Stiller what to do: Ben Stiller, who has signed up to tackle a film that has already passed through the likes of Ron Howard and Steven Spielberg, and which somehow didn't up on Shawn Levy's desk, perhaps because he's way more into Hugh Jackman now.
Stiller has, of course, already handled bringing together comedy and action set-pieces on Tropic Thunder (and on a smaller scale, The Cable Guy and Zoolander), so there’s no reason to doubt that he can pull it off again in this story, which concerns a bored and ineffectual guy who escapes into daydreams where he’s a pilot or doctor and so on. And unlike past failed attempts at remaking Mitty, this at least guarantees that the actor can’t suddenly bail on the director (or vice versa). For the first time in over a decade, this might actually work, and all it took was Ben Stiller believing in Ben Stiller.