Russell Brand to be obnoxious in French this time
After considering what must surely be a wealth of proffered projects in which he plays an abhorrently self-centered, hygienically questionable slouch, rejected Dickensian caricature Russell Brand is gravitating toward being another one of those, only French this time. Variety reports that the star of FX's Brand X may follow up his small-screen stint of finding the irritating whimsy in the ordinary with Pierre Pierre, a comedy from Curb Your Enthusiasm and Sacha Baron Cohen collaborator Larry Charles, in which Russell Brand would similarly make people uncomfortable while starring as an "obnoxious French nihilist"—which, yes, sounds exhausting. Brand's Pierre would be charged with transporting a stolen painting from Paris to London, having run-ins with equally broad characters like "a French police inspector, a serial killer named Pigeonshit, and his own brothel-owning mother," suggesting the sort of searing social satire one can expect. After Arthur, Hop, and Rock Of Ages, should Pierre Pierre prove to be something less than a success, America will mutually agree that we gave this whole Russell Brand thing a chance.