Robert Ben Garant hired to direct that Baywatch movie that is still trying to happen
Since being announced years ago, the big-screen version of Baywatch has been moving very unhurriedly in its development, essentially running in slow motion along a beach while its breasts do a languid, hypnotic bounce, much like what will surely account for 40 percent of the final film's comedy. Not that we're all that clear on what, exactly, the Baywatch movie is about anymore, now that Vulture reports Robert Ben Garant has been brought in to direct a screenplay that has so far passed through The Break-Up writer Jeremy Garelick, Smurfs writers Jay Scherick and David Ronn, and Rescue Me co-creator Peter Tolan, before finally being delivered to Garant's hands. What we do know is that, as it has since around 2009, the movie that is demanded by all who find the idea of David Hasselhoff inherently funny is still being trumpeted as a comedy in the vein of Stripes—a comparison that may or may not be entirely related to its being executive produced by Ivan Reitman, who likely still believes that everything he does is "in the vein of Stripes."
With Grant on board, a natural comparison would now be to the similarly goofy-protectors-in-shorts comedy of Reno 911!—though, considering Garant is also behind broader, family-friendly comedies like Night At The Museum and The Pacifier, it's uncertain which version of Garant this movie is going to get. Either way, you can bet that there will still be lots of satirical running in slow motion, because that's the whole point of making this movie, basically.