Remember when Uber first became a thing? How one day, you didn’t even know what an Uber was, and the next everyone was Ubering back and forth across the city? That’s essentially what’s happening with movies about Uber drivers right now. Last week, we reported that Fox had picked up a spec script, Stuber, about an Uber driver named Stu. And now we’re finding out that one day earlier, Universal also purchased an untitled and unscripted movie about an Uber driver (probably not named Stu), according to The Hollywood Reporter. This one will theoretically star Will Ferrell as a driver who has the misfortune of picking up a deranged and dangerous escaped convict as a passenger. Brendan O’Brien (co-writer of Neighbors) is set to write with Ferrell and Adam McKay producing for their Gary Sanchez production company.
The Fox movie, which will be produced by Jonathan M. Goldstein and John Francis Daley (writers of the Vacation reboot and the upcoming Spider-Man: Homecoming) and is being described as an action-comedy about one driver’s very difficult day, has a completed script, but no star attached. The Universal movie has a star, but no script. Which of these two will be remembered as the definitive app-based transportation network movie of the late 2010s? Or will it be one of the countless other Uber driver movies that are being hatched in the back seats of Ubers on a daily basis? Or might it be a movie about a Lyft driver?