Suddenly everything is coming up Baruchel: The dark, skittish horse of the Judd Apatow Gang has landed the lead roles in both the film adaptation of Stephen King’s short story The Ten O’Clock People and the FX comedy pilot Man Seeking Woman, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Ten O’Clock People, helmed by Child’s Play director Tom Holland, will find Baruchel in the They Live-esque story of a man who’s trying to kick cigarettes with the help of a drug, only to discover that when he smokes with the drug still in his system, one side effect is that it reveals people in authority to be secret monsters (i.e., it transforms him into a cool rebel who recognizes that the system is evil, man, just like when anyone smokes).
Man Seeking Woman is a Lorne Michaels-produced adaptation of SNL writer Simon Rich’s novel The Last Girlfriend On Earth, and it finds Baruchel playing a recently dumped guy who reenters a different “nightmarish hellscape of untold horror”: the dating scene. Presumably Baruchel will learn that the answer to both of these problems is one of those e-cigarettes, which should keep away both monsters and women.