In the sort of filmmaking casting move that’s enough to make us sit up for a minute and calmly—but suspiciously—ask, “Hey, where are you all going with this?”, THR is reporting today that comic book movie refugees Josh Brolin and Peter Dinklage have been cast as the titular siblings in the upcoming comedy project Brothers. Written by Etan Cohen, the film’s story is being kept under wraps, and hopefully not in a “because otherwise we’d have a mob of people screaming at us for this one” kind of way.
Really, there’d be no reason to automatically assume that Brothers will derive the lion’s share comedy from the fact that Dinklage and Brolin have different body types—except in so far as it’s being directly compared by unnamed sources to Twins, the 1988 Ivan Reitman comedy in which Danny DeVito plays Arnold Schwarzenegger’s ethically, intellectually, and genetically shittier twin brother. There’s also the fact that Cohen’s previous credits include the taboo-averse Tropic Thunder, suggesting that the bounds of good taste aren’t necessarily the first priority for his scripts.
Of course, Tropic Thunder was also saved from its worst excesses by the talent of its top-notch cast, a blessing it shares with any project that puts Brolin and Dinklage on the screen together. (And not just in a “two characters out of a billion, Infinity War” kind of way.”) Brolin and Dinklage are both producing, so presumably they both find the whole thing funny enough to stick their names and faces on, as well.