Getting Pissy: Will Ferrell appears on an upcoming episode of Man vs. Wild as part of the promotion for June’s Land of the Lost. Bear Grylls and he survive 48 hours in the north of Sweden, where they rappel down frozen waterfalls, tandem-abseil off a helicopter, eat reindeer eyeballs, share a snow shelter, rummage for food in the forest … and drink their own urine. Awesomely, Ferrell actually said the experience was “a thrill of a lifetime, even though I did get urine-drunk, which is sad.†[Variety]
History Lesson: Matt Damon, Chris Moore, and Josh Brolin are getting their 17-year-old World Bank protester on: The trio will be co-producing the History Channel’s star-heavy adaptation of Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States. Interspersed with documentary material (some that will also be distributed online and via schools) will be dramatic readings from Don Cheadle, Viggo Mortensen, Bruce Springsteen, and others. The History Channel’s Nancy Dubuc praised the project’s versatility, saying, “Everybody is using ‘cross-platform’ because it’s the word of the moment, but we’re really putting the substance behind it.†Which just goes to show you how out of touch with the television industry we are — we thought the word of the moment was “sponge cake.†[Variety]
Drug Wars: Megan Fox will star in thriller The Crossing; she’ll play one-half of a couple that is carjacked while returning from a Mexican vacation. When her husband is then kidnapped, Fox must smuggle heroin across the border to save him. So the bandits hijack a car, kidnap a dude, and then force a chick to smuggle drugs? We don’t know, that just kind of sounds roundabout. Keep it simple, bandits. [HR]
Snow Man: Director Errol Morris is ditching the documentary genre for his next project, taking on an untitled dark comedy based on Robert F. Nelson’s memoir We Froze the First Man and a story that aired on NPR’s “This American Life†this week called “You’re As Cold As Ice.†The plot follows Nelson, a TV repairman who joined a group of cryonics pioneers back in the sixties who were trying to cheat death — with hilariously bumbled results! But seriously, those people sound like the Dharma Initiative, which is awesome. [Variety]
Night Grows: Raúl Esparza, Audra McDonald, and Hamish Linklater have joined the cast of Twelfth Night, the Shakespeare in the Park production starring Anne Hathaway; they’ll play the duke Orsino, countess Olivia, and fun drunk Andrew Aguecheek, respectively. Blah blah blah blah Twelfth Night reference that you won’t get anyway, ‘cause this isn’t tenth-grade English class … [HR]
Cudi Signs: Kid Cudi, the Cleveland rapper behind the hit single “Day ‘N’ Night,†has landed a deal with Universal Motown. His debut album, tentatively titled The Man on the Moon With the Guardians (yikes), is slotted for an August release. Universal Motown president Sylvia Rhone explained that “I was looking at another act on Fool’s Gold by the name of Kid Sister … We didn’t sign Sister, but [Universal Motown A&R manager Nigel Mack] brought me Cudi early last year and I was immediately engaged.†Anytime you get a chance to shame a formerly hyped indie rapper while signing a currently hyped indie rapper, that’s an opportunity you have to take. [Billboard]