Although seemingly every new dawn brings fresh news of “Steve Carell’s first film project after The Office,” Deadline is now insisting (again) that he will go straight from the show to making Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World, in which he plays a guy whose confronting of imminent apocalypse is slightly abated by Keira Knightley falling in love with him. Seeking will be directed by its screenwriter, Lorene Scafaria of Nick And Norah’s Infinite Playlist, who once again uses an impromptu road trip and the search for another girl as the backdrop for blossoming romance, as Carell—abandoned by his panicky wife—journeys to be with his high-school sweetheart before an asteroid collides with Earth and takes his incredibly pretty yet apparently completely alone neighbor with him.
Naturally, Carell and Knightley fall in love, and I’m going to guess right now that the aforementioned asteroid misses at the last possible second, leaving them free to start a whole new life together. If not, and the film really does end with the two about to finally kiss, only to be pulverized into cosmic oblivion, then I already love it. I’ve long thought every single romantic comedy could go from middling to must-see if it simply climaxed with the world ending: Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey finally bicker their way into loving one another, he’s about to propose, and then boom—mushroom cloud. Instant classic.