No longer standing in the darkness, afraid to step into the light that would reveal it as short on genuine inspiration beyond nostalgic kitsch, the long-gestating Baywatch movie has moved away from the edge of surrender by casting its lead. According to The Wrap, Saturday Night Live star-who-deserves-better Bill Hader has signed on to play “the Hasselhoff character”—a designation that unintentionally speaks to the crux of the Baywatch movie parody idea, which is the belief that “David Hasselhoff” is a comic character worth recreating, and then girls in bikinis can run in exaggerated slow motion for 35 cumulative minutes.
There’s also a plot about the lifeguards “exploring an oil rig of the Malibu coast that turns out to be a meth lab,” according to Reno 911’s Robert Ben Garant, who recently became the latest writer to work on a script that’s passed through at least three others already. But more importantly than that, both Hasselhoff and Pamela Anderson will also have cameos in the film, reassuring audiences that they’re watching a movie making fun of Baywatch and that the people being mocked are gladly in on the joke. After all, that's the essence of good satire, along with lots of slow-motion running.