Richard Linklater Departs 'The Incredible Mr. Limpet' for His "Spiritual Sequel" to 'Dazed and 'Confused'

Attached to the project for three years, Richard Linklater only recently began pushing ahead on a remake of The Incredible Mr. Limpet. With Zach Galifianakis, Jon Hamm, Kevin Hart, and more coming aboard to voice some of the animated characters, things seemed to be progressing well. But now Linklater has decided to focus his energies on another long-developing film, leaving Mr. Limpet in need of a new director.

THR reports Linklater will be concentrating on his "spiritual sequel" to Dazed and Confused, a college-set comedy now titled That's What I'm Talking About. The film has been in the works for years and like Dazed and Confused will be based in part on Linklater's life. The story will follow "freshmen as they navigate through the first year of college life, while trying to make the baseball team."

The idea is that all of the Oscar buzz surrounding Boyhood, Linklater's acclaimed coming-of-age drama, has driven him to want to capitalize on the attention. If all comes together Linklater would like to begin filming this fall. The fate of The Incredible Mr. Limpet is now up in the air without a director attached. Linklater had been planning to use a similar rotoscoping animation style similar to Waking Life, but that would likely change now.

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Jon Hamm, Kevin Hart Eye Richard Linklater's 'Mr. Limpet'; New Clip from 'Boyhood'

In a couple of weeks Richard Linklater will finally release his 12-year coming of age epic, Boyhood (catch my review here), and he'll be following it up with another project that has been in the works for some time. Zach Galifianakis has long been attached to star in Linklater's remake of Don Knotts comedy, The Incredible Mr. Limpet, and with the project officially moving forward a talented cast is starting to assemble around it.

Jon Hamm, Kevin Hart, Josh Gad, Key & Peele, Sarah Silverman, and Danny McBride are in talks to join the film, a live-action/animated hybrid based on the Theodore Pratt novel that inspired the 1964 movie. Galifianakis plays a bearded beach bum and activist who is turned into a fish and sets out to save the aquatic population and his town. Hamm would play the villain, a businessman who mines the ocean floor. McBride and Silverman are expected to take human roles while the rest will be voicing animated fish.

Linklater will be employing an animated style still similar to his Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly, which may take kids a little getting used to. Filming could begin this fall if everything comes together.

But first Linklater has Boyhood to open in theaters, and even if it's not your typical summer tentpole it's an achievement bigger films can't come close to matching. Ethan Hawke, Patricia Arquette, Ellar Coltrane, Linklater's daughter Lorelai shot the movie over the course of twelve years, filming a few weeks at a time. It allows us to see these characters evolve naturally, and the same goes for the actors portraying them. The story centers on Mason (Coltrane) as he grows up in a broken-but-loving home, and in this scene he's getting a lecture from his Dad about having a natural conversation.

Boyhood opens in limited release July 11th, here in DC a week later.[TheWrap]

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Richard Linklater Moves Forward on 'The Incredible Mr. Limpet' Remake

I was sitting in the audience as Richard Linklater premiered his epic, twelve years in the making coming-of-age drama Boyhood (review here), and considering how much he put into that it's amazing to think he's moving on to something else so soon. Warner Bros. has been trying to get a remake of 1964 live-action/animated fantasy The Incredible Mr. Limpet off the ground for years, and back in 2011 Linklater became attached to direct it. Little has been heard of it since then as Linklater has taken on other projects, but now it looks like he's finally ready to bring this odd little film back into the spotlight.

According to Screen Daily, the film will be next up for Linklater, who plans on combining live-action and animation just like the original. To get started on the animation side of things he's brought on Femke Wolting and Tommy Pallotta, the latter having worked on the rotoscoping animation for Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly.

Don Knotts starred as Mr. Limpet in the prior film, which was a strange and (at least in my opinion) forgettable story about a shy man who turns into a talking fish. Taking place around the time of the Pearl Harbor attacks, Limpet always wanted to join the military but couldn't, so he uses his newfound ability to help locate and destroy Nazi subs. Told you it was strange. As for this version, it looks like Zach Galifianakis is still on board to play Mr. Limpet, and he shares similar goofy qualities with Knotts even if they couldn't be more different physically.  Presumably the story will have to be updated, but naval warfare is hardly what it used to be. Maybe Mr. Limpet will turn into a hummingbird that helps drones sniff out terrorists?

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