In what may be the coup de grâce of his decade-long quest to gain the love of the entire Internet, The Hobbit star Martin Freeman is now in talks to play Tina Fey’s boyfriend in the upcoming Afghan war comedy The Taliban Shuffle, according to The Hollywood Reporter. He’s already launched a thousand ships with his appearances in The Hobbit trilogy and Sherlock, but a Freeman-Fey screen romance would be on another level entirely.
Freeman, currently on a hot streak that precisely no one is calling the Freemanaissance, would play a Scottish photojournalist working alongside Fey’s character in Afghanistan and Pakistan during the main thrust of Operation Enduring Freedom, where the pair become emotionally entwined. Based on journalist Kim Barker’s memoir of her time spent covering the war for the Chicago Tribune, The Taliban Shuffle will show the dangerous and often absurd world that war correspondents inhabit through a darkly comedic lens. Written by 30 Rock writer Robert Carlock and directed by Glenn Ficarra and John Requa of Crazy, Stupid, Love and the upcoming Focus, the film is anticipated to have a long, happy life circulating as GIFs on Tumblr.