Ben Stiller joins prestigious list of comic actors who have said they're remaking The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty

By Sean O'Neal | April 8, 2011 | 3:48pm

Aux Features Film

The names who have been “attached” over the past two decades to a remake of the 1947 Danny Kaye film The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty (which was itself based on the James Thurber short story) reads like a chronological list of America’s comic infatuations: Jim Carrey, Mike Myers, Sacha Baron Cohen, Owen Wilson, and Will Ferrell have all been named at one time or another as next in line to tackle the story of a timid proofreader who hides behind his rich fantasy life, leaving only a scattered few like Adam Sandler and Jack Black out in the cold. (Though we suppose you could argue that Bedtime Stories and even Gulliver’s Travels were both pale reflections in their own ways.)

So just before the project trickled down to, say, Russell Brand, it seems as though Ben Stiller is also willing to take a crack at it, with Deadline reporting that Stiller has signed on now that the old, soiled script that passed from hand to hand has been dumped in favor of a new take by The Pursuit Of Happyness writer Steve Conrad. Fox is currently looking for a “director who can mix action with a PG rating,” because they don’t just want to come right out and say, “Shawn Levy,” because that’s a poor negotiating tactic. Naturally, we’ll believe it when we see it. Or maybe Stiller and all his forebears could finally just admit that “remaking The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty” is some kind of insider code for heading to a private, hedonistic island retreat filled with Thai prostitutes or something.