Some people believe that Judd Apatow has a tendency to make movies that overstay their welcome a bit, and in a perfect confluence of things that are overstaying their welcome, his next movie is actually going to be about a global pandemic—you know, like the one we’ve been in since March or so! It’s not so much a softball for jokes as it is a tee-ball for jokes, like “this pandemic has been going on longer than the sequence in Funny People where they went to Eric Bana’s house and never, ever left.” We’re not saying it’s funny, as this pandemic is still awful and depressing and it’s making everyone miserable, but c’mon. Apatow movies are long, the coronavirus pandemic has been long, Apatow is making a movie about a pandemic. It demands to be acknowledged.
Anyway, the movie has been picked up by Netflix, which tweeted that it’s a “comedy about a group of actors and actresses stuck inside a pandemic bubble at a hotel attempting to complete a film.” Not quite as ill-advised as Songbird, but it does feel a little… soon. We are still in the middle of the pandemic, after all. No word on when this might get made, so maybe it won’t be too soon by the time it hits Netflix, but we do know that Apatow will direct it and will co-write it with Pam Brady (a longtime South Park producer and writer on Lady Dynamite).