A little less than a year ago, there was news that Paul Giamatti had emerged to replace Sean Penn as Larry in a big-screen update of "The Three Stooges." The news was quickly put down by Giamatti, but fans remained curious. After all, it's a perfect bit of casting.
I spoke to the actor last week as he was doing press for the DVD release of the dark comedy "Pretty Bird," in which he stars with Billy Crudup and David Hornsby. Since I already had him on the phone, I had to pry a little into exactly what went down with that whole "Three Stooges" thing.
"My involvement in that was some completely flukey thing," he said. "I was never supposed to be doing that movie." Soooooooooo... if that's the case, what happened?
"Somebody said something to me at Sundance, and I thought [they] were kidding. They said to me, 'Are you going to play Larry in The Three Stooges?' And I thought that was just a joke question somebody was asking me, and I said 'Yes I am,'" Giamatti explained. "Then it became this whole thing on the Internet. I don't know what's happening on that movie, I had no idea."
It turns out that the story went a little further. Asked if he'd actually spoken with anyone involved with the movie, Giamatti said... only it came up after the Sundance incident and subsequent breaking news.
He said, "After that happened, [the people doing the movie] came to me and said, 'Do you actually want to do it?' And then the movie just went away in general. I talked [to them] for about an hour, then the whole thing just seemed to disappear."
** FOLLOW MTV MOVIES BLOG ON TWITTER! **