Given her energy, enthusiasm, and abundant comic talents, its kind of surprising that Saturday Night Live star Leslie Jones hasn’t starred in more movies. (Even her most high-profile roles, like Ghostbusters, have been ensemble pieces.) That’s about to change, though, with Deadline reporting that Jones will be the star of the first movie coming out of a new deal between Universal Pictures and SNL mastermind Lorne Michaels, who’s apparently getting back into the movie-making game.
Jones will star opposite SNL’s Colin Jost in Baby Nurse, the first comedy to come out of Michaels’ new deal with the studio. Jost will write and executive produce, while Jones will play “a special agent assigned to the most humbling undercover role in the history of the FBI.” (Is she a nurse for a baby? A baby who’s a nurse? Is this a stealth sequel to Baby Driver? WE HAVE TO KNOW.)
We’re a long way from the heyday of the SNL character movie, a concept that took its delirious final blow with MacGruber back in 2010. Still, Jones is a potent comic force, so if things go well here, maybe we’ll finally get that Shanice Goodwin: Ninja movie we’ve all been quietly pining for for years.