Jorma Taccone To Direct Searchlight Comedy ‘DNA’ Starring Ben Schwartz & Sam Rockwell

EXCLUSIVE: The Lonely Island’s Jorma Taccone has come aboard Searchlight’s comedy DNA, starring Ben Schwartz and Sam Rockwell, as director and producer.

The project is the second announced in two weeks for Taccone, who recently launched production in Finland on The Trip, a thriller starring Jason Segel and Samara Weaving. News of the film first broke in the summer of 2020, after Schwartz sold it to Searchlight as an untitled pitch, with Rockwell also cementing his involvement at that time.

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DNA‘s logline is being kept under wraps. Schwartz wrote the script, with Ali Bell, Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer, and Taccone to produce under their Party Over Here banner. Schwartz and Rockwell are the executive producers. SVP of Production Taylor Friedman and Creative Executive Cornelia Burleigh are overseeing the project for Searchlight Pictures, reporting to Heads of Production and Development DanTram Nguyen and Katie Goodson-Thomas.

Taccone broke out as one third of SNL-affiliated sketch group The Lonely Island before going on to make his feature directorial debut with the SNL spin-off film MacGruber, which he also co-wrote. The sketch’s life in film and TV continued thereafter with a Peacock series of the same name, which he co-created, directed and exec produced.

In his second feature outing with Universal’s music industry mockumentary Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, starring The Lonely Island’s Andy Samberg, Taccone directed alongside the third member of the group, Akiva Schaffer. Produced by 87North and XYZ Film, his new film The Trip follows a dysfunctional couple (Segel and Weaving) who head to a remote cabin to “reconnect” — each, with the secret intention to kill the other.

Over the years, Taccone has also directed on series like The Last O.G., Miracle Workers, and Parks and Recreation, among others. Additional credits, either as producer or EP, include I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson, Self Reliance, The Diary of a Teenage Girl, Palm Springs, and Brigsby Bear.

Taccone is represented by UTA and Johnson Shapiro Slewett & Kole.

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