Adam Sandler isn’t the only Saturday Night Live alum out here pitching film ideas to Netflix. Deadline reports Will Ferrell will write and star in a new comedy inspired by The Eurovision Song Contest, the “popular and long running international TV music competition” which helped launch the careers of artists like ABBA and Celine Dion in much the same way that SNL has served as a training ground for stars like Sander and Ferrell.
Ferrell is writing the movie, currently titled Eurovision, with SNL and Funny Or Die… scribe Andrew Steele, and Adam McKay is executive producing. Noting that comedies are being muscled out of box office returns by tentpole films, Deadline sees this as a win-win for Netflix and Ferrell: 43 countries participated in the latest iteration of the real-life competition, which Deadline suggests means there’s a built-in audience for the project abroad. Ferrell, meanwhile, gets a chance at establishing the kind of streaming empire that Sandler is overseeing thanks to an extensive production deal—and none too soon. Deadline quotes fellow SNL alum Mike Myers (whose own film career has stalled) as saying Netflix is where it’s at: “Comedy is a small-screen experience now.”