Back in April, Jonah Hill told Collider that the much-touted, very expensive screenplay “The Adventurer’s Handbook” was going to be “the next movie I’m shooting.” To refresh your memory, the project penned by Hill, Matt Spicer and Max Winkler, the film will follow four childhood friends who embark on a global adventure inspired by the stories of explorers detailed in Mick Conefrey’s book “The Adventurer’s Handbook: Life Lessons From History’s Great Explorers.”
Yet, they all play pretty flawed characters. Jason Segel has the role of talented musician, but alcoholic who never got his act together instead becoming a backup piano player. Hill will play an engineer isolated from his family and Jason Schwartzman plays a spoiled and cowardly three-time Grammy winner. So who’s that fourth friend? They hadn’t cast that actor yet.
But, as things happen in Hollywood, plans change and schedules shift and what seemed as Hill’s surefire next starring gig has now taken a firm backseat to a handful of other projects on the actor’s very busy slate. Catching up again with Collider, Hill revealed that, “Basically, we got greenlit and then we had scheduling conflicts because of Jason Segel and Jason Schwartzman’s television shows [“How I Met Your Mother” & “Bored To Death”]. We basically had to fit it into this window and their shows went over [schedule] or whatever and we just couldn’t do it, and then luckily I got offered ‘Moneyball’ shortly after that.”
Unfortunately, the scheduling conflicts now put “The Adventurer’s Handbook” at least four movies away, with Hill already lined up to star in three projects starting with “Moneyball” this summer, as well as keeping an eye out for something he can direct himself once he finishes “21 Jump Street” next year. “Well, I think we got so lucky in that everyone we wrote it for said yes, which very rarely happens. And especially Schwartzman’s role is so, I just can’t imagine anyone else playing Schwartzman’s role. It’s just built for him, you know what I mean? So I’m going to make ‘Moneyball’ and ‘The Sitter’ with David Gordon Green and then ‘Jump Street’ and then after that, I want to find the first movie to direct. That’s my goal, so ‘Adventurer’s’ is something that we still love and we aren’t disregarding doing it, but we have got to see how it comes back together.”
Damn, it really sounds like the window of opportunity has closed on “The Adventurer’s Handbook” for the next little while. We’re fans of all three leads and we do hope they manage to carve out some time get in front of the camera and knock this out. But for now, it seems like its going to be a bit of way off.
This movie sounds a lot like "Dolph and Erasmus", the humor novel by Tom Alford and D.J. Kaercher. Except this seems more serious/melodramatic whereas the other is more silly/farcical. If you're excited about this (like I am), you should check out "Dolph and Erasmus."