After releasing the chaotic wedding flickYou’re Cordially Invited, writer-directorNicholas Stoller, his starWill Ferrell, and Amazon MGM are wasting no time getting their next collaboration together. As announced back in October, the trio is back in business withJudgment Day, another original comedyfeaturing theAnchormanlegendas a megalomaniacal reality television judge who’s about to get a visit from an angry convict he locked away. Now that their last effort together is officially in the rearview mirror, the project is about to heat up and Stoller is ready to share what’s about to go down in his fictional courtroom. He dove deep into the new movie in a recent conversation with Collider’sSteve Weintraubfor his Prime Video rom-com, detailing what to expect fromJudgment Day, the inspiration for it all, and when filming begins.
Stoller is in the middle of a busy stretch to begin 2025. “You’re Cordially Invitedis this weekend, and then my wife and I are in post onPlatonic, which will come out later this year, the second season,” he said. Anticipation is high for thereturn of Apple TV+‘sRose ByrneandSeth Rogencomedyseries, and he assures, “It’s turned out great. So, that is coming out this year. We don’t have a release date yet for that.” Beyond that, he’s also preparing for the release ofAndy Serkis’s animatedAnimal Farmadaptation, which he penned the screenplay for.
Despite it all, his attention is heavily focused on gettingJudgment Dayoff the ground. Since our interview with Stoller, it has beenconfirmed thatZac Efronwill play the “other guy” inJudgment Day. Of the film’s plot, Stoller said:
“ThenJudgment Dayis about a TV judge, played by Will Ferrell. I don’t know if we’re allowed to talk about who the other guy is, but we’re pretty close to knowing who the other guys are. Basically,he’s a TV judge—kind of a blowhard, kind of a jerk. You find all this out over the course of the movie, but the backstory is he ruled against this guy years ago, and it caused this guy’s life to spiral, and he ended up in jail. He gets out of jail, andhe takes the judge’s show hostage live on air in order to put the judge on the stand, is basically what it’s about. It’s a crazy movie.”
Nicholas Stoller Describes ‘Judgment Day’ as “Tense but Very Funny”
Though this is a comedy with Ferrell as its star playing a larger-than-life character, it won’t be entirely humorous. The setting of a hostage situation, even if it’s a bit bizarre,will create extra tension in the air that isn’t quite as present in his and Stoller’s previous team-upslikeBlades of Glory,Zoolander 2, orYou’re Cordially Invited. As far as inspiration goes, the writer-director looked to far more serious crime thrillers to capture the gravity of the life-or-death situation facing the judge while also referencing theRob ReinerclassicA Few Good Mento nail down the courtroom atmosphere. He explained:
“At this point, I’ve made enough things to be like, ‘I don’t know, it’s my tone.’ I can’t do the Adam McKay tone, which is so amazing. I love those movies. They’re incredible. They’re some of the greatest comedies ever, but I don’t know exactly how to do that.Inside ManandDog Day Afternoonare the two references, andA Few Good Men. Those are the three movies I keep looking at, teasing apart and trying to figure out how they work. I think it would probably, tonally, if I do it correctly, be closest toNeighborsin that it will be actually tense but very funny. That’s the goal.”
Despite the change in stakes, Stoller believesJudgment Dayhas quite a bit in common withYou’re Cordially Invited. For one, he sees it as another opportunity for Ferrell to delivera more layered comedic performance. In the wedding comedy, he played a dad trying to secure a destination wedding venue for his daughteronly to begin a warwith the sister (Reese Witherspoon) of a bride-to-be over how to share the location, showcasing his more emotional side along the way. On a wider scale, Stoller also sees both leaning more heavily into their comedic sides than their genres:
“I’m kind of just like, ‘I hope I can pull it off.’ But it’s a bit like withYou’re Cordially Invited; I think Will Ferrell is this amazing actor, in addition to being a great comedian. Doing comedy is acting, but doing an earnest, emotional scene, he hasn’t… And in this movie,he has a bunch of pretty earnest, emotional scenes that really pull my heartstrings. He has all these other gears that he’s done stuff in, but it’s been fun to do that in this one, too.I want it to be a tense kind of action movie, but it’ll be like all my movies.WithYou’re Cordially Invited, people are like, ‘It’s a rom-com,’ and I’m like, ‘Well, it’s more of a com-rom.’ It’s more comedic than rom-com-y.”
When Will ‘Judgment Day’ Start Filming?
Stoller further assures that he’s not being a stickler about what the genresYou’re Cordially InvitedandJudgment Dayare or that he necessarily has a distaste for those types of films. “Not that there’s [anything] wrong with a rom-com,” he continued. “That’s just not what it is.” In the case of the latter, he set expectations for the level of humor by adding that he “wouldn’t say it’s an action comedy. I think at the end of the day it’ll be a comedy action movie.” Filming isn’t far off for the raucous project, asStoller confirmed cameras will begin rolling in “Late April if all continues according to plan.”
Stay tuned here at Collider for more onJudgment Dayas more news comes out. In the meantime,You’re Cordially Invitedis now streaming on Prime Video.
